The contract was awarded to CMC Construction Company, Inc., of Oak Ridge. Construction Management for the project is performed by Knight/Jacobs Joint Venture.
The contract schedule for designing and building the cooling towers is 260 calendar days, with the completion date estimated to be on or before June 2002. The cooling towers will be used to provide the initial cooling of water fed to the chillers, which provide cooling to office, laboratory, and equipment rooms for the entire SNS site.
When completed in 2006, the SNS will become the world's leading research facility for study of the structure and dynamics of materials using neutrons. The SNS will operate as a user facility that will enable researchers from the United States and abroad to study the science of materials that forms the basis for new technologies in telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation, information technology, biotechnology, and health.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.