The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District is currently managing the design and construction of the Collective Training Campus at Fort McCoy Reserve Center in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.
Once completed, the new $190 million campus will include four barracks, a brigade headquarters and two additional buildings to serve as officer quarters.
The new campus will serve those in transit to and from deployments and for annual training purposes, where servicemen and servicewomen could stay anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.
“These barracks, these officers’ quarters, these brigade headquarters are set up where people can come in and use these facilities while they train on the various ranges around the area and whatever else they may have to do depending on their MOS (military occupational specialty),” said Jason Cain, Louisville District project manager. “We talked about this when we were designing the brigade headquarters; they may have a medical unit come in and need to rearrange furniture to accommodate their training needs. So, that is how the whole campus is designed to function.”
In the past, Fort McCoy Reserve Center occupied barracks that were built during World War II.
“When I was coming back from deploying overseas with the National Guard in 2005, I came through Fort McCoy and actually stayed in the old WWII barracks,” Cain said. “Being part of the Fort McCoy project delivery team is very special to me.”
Some of the old World War II-era barracks buildings have been moved and placed in open lots to make space for the new training campus.
Cain and Louisville District Project Engineer/Architect Michael Barry, along with project delivery teammates from the Omaha District and the U.S. Army Reserve Command, participated in an Industry Day Oct. 18, 2023, for the Collective Training Enlisted Barracks, the fourth and last of the new barracks as part of the Collective Training Campus.
“We enjoy working with USACE, we are directly linked with all of the project managers for all of our projects where Louisville runs and constructs our entire portfolio,” said Gary Prime, USAR Command Construction Branch engineer.
The new east four-story Collective Training Enlisted Barracks, similar to the other three the Louisville District designed for the campus, will provide a 400-person open bay barracks for soldiers to participate in major exercises, annual training, battle assembly and mobilization training.
Each barracks building is approximately 62,000 square feet and made up of four sleeping bays per floor with each sleeping bay providing 24 single beds. The buildings have, or will have, a total of 16 sleeping bays, with leadership sleeping quarters accomodating two leadership beds per floor. Each floor provides Soldiers with a laundry facility, latrines with individual showers and a company storage area.
The Louisville District has been involved with this project since Dec. 2017 when the team initiated the design of the first barracks.
“The west Collective Training Enlisted Barracks was the first one we designed, and it was completed in April 2022,” Barry said. “Then the north Collective Training Enlisted Barracks was just turned over to the base in April 2023.”
The north barracks recently achieved a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification for new buildings and major renovations, meaning that the facility was designed and built with an emphasis on sustainable site design practices, energy efficiency, water conservation, sustainable materials and indoor environmental quality.
In addition to the west and north barracks, the south barracks building is in the initial phase of construction and is expected to be complete in October 2025, and the east barracks is currently in design and in process of solicitation.
The campus currently also includes a $13.8 million brigade headquarters, commonly referred to as BHQ east. The new two-story, 23,000 square foot, two-brigade unit is more than 90 percent complete, and each floor provides the administrative and support spaces required for one full brigade unit with administrative offices, conference rooms and classrooms. Additionally, the BHQ east is the first building of the Collective Training campus to introduce renewable energy source in the form of photovoltaic panels on the roof. The BHQ building is scheduled to be completed in Feb. 2024. There are also plans for the campus to potentially include an additional two BHQs in the future.
In addition to the barracks and BHQ, both of the 48,500 square foot, four-story Collective Training Officers Quarters, commonly referred to as OQ, are in final design with construction anticipated to begin Summer 2024.
The projects, or buildings, that make up this new campus were all designed in-house, meaning USACE employees designed the facilities themselves.
“Our work at Fort McCoy is a perfect example of successful teamwork within our in-house design team,” said Kevin Jasper, Louisville District Planning, Programs and Project Management Branch deputy chief. “We are very proud of our team for all their hard work at Fort McCoy.”
However, like with any project, there have been some challenges.
“The groundwater is always a problem, whether it is infiltration based just because the water table is so high in this part of Wisconsin,” Barry said.
During WWII, the area the campus is on now was originally a swampy area that was filled in, according to Ken Green, Omaha District Contracting Officer’s Representative who is onsite at Fort McCoy and oversees the construction of these projects.
“Groundwater here has caused a few challenges for us. We raised the first building under construction two feet and never missed a beat,” Green said. “Once we started to build, we couldn’t keep up with the groundwater and that’s when I raised the concern. We had 20-30 people talking daily trying to figure out what we could do with a limited budget.”
The team took lessons learned from constructing the first barracks and applied them to the others to help ensure successful project delivery.
The entire campus is currently scheduled to be complete in spring 2028.