Value Delivered
Shambaugh’s fire protection group provided construction, installation, and fabrication services on-site for this large-scale project, including sprinklers, fire protection systems, and piping.
At the time of construction, the Gigafactory was the largest building in the world by footprint, exceeding 5.8 million square feet. To help ensure timely delivery on a project of this size, Shambaugh maintained a high volume of staff onsite—project management and engineering staff peaked at ten, and manpower ranged from four to 78 workers at a time.
Clients Objectives
Tesla sought to construct a new, state-of-the-art facility, the Gigafactory, where they would produce 35 gigawatt hours per year of lithium-ion battery cells to power their products, nearly doubling the world’s current combined rate of battery production.
Scope of Services
Shambaugh’s fire protection team engineered and installed 225 total fire protection systems across the 5.8-million-square-foot site. The systems feature multiple fire suppression technologies, including:
- Wet
- Dry
- Pre-action
- Deluge
- Foam systems
- F500 systems
- FM200 systems
- CO2 systems
Other work included the installation of approximately 96,000 sprinklers and the prefabrication and installation of approximately 25 miles of piping.
Client Background
Tesla is a Palo Alto, CA-based vehicle and clean energy company.