When architect William Murray took on the task of designing the Florida Armed Forces Reserve Center — a 140,000-sq.-ft. multi-use facility located in Pinellas Park, Fla., adjacent to St. Petersburg — he had to incorporate force protection, energy efficiency and green building materials. After weighing the force-protection and speed-of-construction needs of the project, Murray decided to build with insulating concrete forms (ICFs), making the job the largest military contract ever to use ICFs and the biggest reserve center ever built.

“Since September 11, all military buildings must have force protection built in,” says Murray, who works for URS Corp. of Tampa. “ICF construction was the most cost-effective way to achieve that. We could get the strongest wall in the shortest amount of time, which is key to any military project. Working with masonry construction would have required so much more reinforcement and construction time.”

The project's general contractor, Hunt Construction Group of Tampa, chose Icon, Inc. as the ICF subcontractor, citing the company's experience with large-scale ICF projects. Reward Wall Systems supplied iForm ICFs.

Murray explains that the iForm was a good fit for the project, providing quick installation, flexible design and easy finish application. “For example, we were able to line all the warehouse walls with gypboard, because it is fully supported on the ICF walls,” he says. The ability to apply synthetic stucco exterior directly to the ICFs also resulted in cost savings.

Michael Savidakis, project director with Hunt Construction, says the iForm has potential to be used in more government applications. “This is a fairly simple system with great potential for future projects,” he explains.

Murray adds, “We were given volumes of criteria for the building of this facility, with the primary concern being the force protection of personnel and equipment. Since we started construction about a year ago, two different Congressional committees have come down here to see what we're doing.”

The reserve center is designed to house both National Guard and Army Reserve personnel. In addition to the ICF construction, the occupied portion of the facility is surrounded by a concrete retaining wall set 80 feet away from the building. Anchor Block supplied the Stack Block, which is made specifically for retaining walls. A late summer 2004 completion is expected.

The engineering theories applied at the Pinellas Park facility are similar to those demonstrated on TNT explosion testing done on ICF wall systems last May by the Insulating Concrete Form Association at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. During those tests, six reaction boxes built using ICFs were exposed to detonations of 50 lbs. of military-grade TNT at 6-ft. and 40-ft. distances. At each distance, the compressive-strength properties of expanded polystyrene on the face of the boxes both absorbed and distributed the load of the explosion, with the EPS compressing upon the face of the reaction boxes.

The Quantico demonstrations followed blast testing conducted in 2002 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Engineer Research and Development Center (Mississippi) on concrete block walls with three types of protective, interior wythe linings.