The following update about progress to build a new facility for the National Cryptologic Museum was provided by NCF staffer Mr. Larry Castro.
In a special letter to NCF Members & Donors in July 2022, NCF President & CEO Laura Nelson advised that in June 2022, the NCF Board of Directors voted to terminate the Foundation's effort to fund and construct the Cyber Center for Education and Innovation (CCEI). In this article, we are pleased to report encouraging and timely developments undertaken by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with support from the NCF, toward creating a Military Construction (MILCON ) project that would sustain and enhance the original CCEI vision.
Highlights of this work completed since July 2022 include the following:
- In July 2022, NSA provided FY2022 MILCON funding to the Baltimore Office of the USACE to allow the Corps to let a contract with those expiring funds to create a Form 1391 for a MILCON project to continue work the NCF could not do to construct the CCEI. The completed Form 1391 will describe the requirements for this MILCON effort (which has been renamed the Education and Innovation Center (EIC)) and will provide a cost estimate/analysis of MILCON funding required to complete the effort. When completed, this Form 1391 will be submitted by NSA to Congress in the next MILCON programming cycle as a precursor to obtaining the necessary funding to construct the EIC.
- To create Form 1391 for the EIC, the Baltimore Office of the USACE contracted on 30 September with a team comprised of: Dewberry - a very large architectural-engineering firm with regional headquarters in Fairfax, VA and Gannett-Fleming - a similarly large civil engineering firm headquartered in Harrisburg, PA. USACE selected this team based on responses to a larger solicitation sent earlier to the Corps' list of pre-qualified vendors.
- Typically, the creation of Form 1391 is a two to three-year effort. However, over the last four months, considerable NCF effort has been directed to secure the release of all of the original CCEI design materials (Construction Documents and Technical Specifications), the creation of which the Foundation funded over the past 10 years. The expectation is that by providing these materials, the production time for Form 1391 could be significantly reduced.
To allow this to happen, the Foundation:
~ Secured ownership of the copyright of all architectural materials created by CCEI design architect (Ziger|Snead (Z|S) of Baltimore).
~ Negotiated a Gift Acceptance Agreement with NSA that stipulates the terms under which these materials can be used.
- With the creation of Form 1391 well underway, upcoming milestones for the effort include:
~ Visits in January 2023 to the storage sites for the CCEI's structural steel (540 tons) and pre-cast concrete panels (81 panels each 32' long, 8' high,6" thick and each weighing 22,000 pounds).
~ A three-day design charrette in March 2023, during which NSA will restate/amend/review/modify the original CCEI design requirements to become the EIC baseline.
*** Updates to these and other project milestones will be provided in further NCF E-Newsletter articles.
