June 18, 2009 Work begins at GlobalFoundries site The Business Review (Albany) - by Pam Allen
The arrival of the first earth-moving equipment for GlobalFoundries new $4.2 billion chip fab marked the start of a two-year-long construction process for the Sunnyvale, Calif., company.
About a dozen large pieces of equipment arrived Monday on the site for ground-clearing work that is scheduled to start this week. As many as 1,600 workers will be employed during the two-year construction process. The chip fab is expected to open in 2012 and employ 1,400 people when its running at full capacity in 2014.
The 1.3-million-square-foot manufacturing facilitylocated on 223 acres in the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta is the parks first tenant.
Having our anchor makes Luther Forest a real tech campus. Before, we had infrastructure, said Michael Relyea, president of Luther Forest.
Initially, about 100 people will work on the GlobalFoundries site.
Well work in the several-hundred range until the worst of winter, said Rick Whitney, president of M+W Zanders U.S. Operations. Germany-based M+W Zander is the projects general manager.
Those numbers will ramp up over the next six to nine months, he said. More than 1,000 people will be working on the project a year from now.
M+W Zander is preparing to award the contract for steel work, Whitney said. Separate bid packages to erect steel for the 800,0000-square-foot building and neighboring utility building were sent to 12 companies. Of the five companies that responded, two are local, one is a partnership with a local company and two are out-of-state.
Whitney declined to disclose the price ranges of those bids.
The Delaney Group of Gloversville won the contract for the site development work. The cost of that project is estimated at about $15 million.
Foundation work will be bid in the next few weeks, Whitney said. Steel work should begin in August.
