Construction hasn’t yet begun on the new $500 million JCB machinery plant on the South Side of San Antonio. But a lot of thinking and collaborating is going into the planned factory’s architecture and design.
Still in the design phase, a team of people are working to draw up plans for a factory that will be the size of nine soccer fields, house custom machinery and equipment and accommodate up to 1,500 workers.
While a general contractor has yet to be named, JCB selected for its architecture team the San Antonio architects from RVK, who recently sat down with the Report to talk about what goes into designing a modern factory.
RVK’s portfolio includes companies like Indo-MIM, Samuel’s Glass and a corporate data center, doing the kind of work in great demand lately as the region’s advanced manufacturing sector has grown, especially in the last decade.
JCB company leaders and local officials broke ground at the Highway 16 site in early June. At the time, clearing and leveling part of the 400-acre former ranch for the manufacturing plant had already begun and is expected to take another two months.
JCB plans for the factory, its second largest in the world, to start cranking out lift and access equipment used in construction by 2026.
When it fully joins the industrial sector in San Antonio, JCB will be one of more than 1,500 manufacturers in the region employing about 60,000 workers, said Dan Yoxall, president and CEO of the San Antonio Manufacturers Association. The gross regional product of their combined output is $7 billion.
“JCB is a great complement to the broader manufacturing community here, which is very diversified,” Yoxall said. “It fits right in with what’s going on here.”
The sector is very diverse. Though companies like Navistar and Toyota spring to mind when it comes to San Antonio-based factories, other large contributors include companies like DPT Laboratories, grocer H-E-B and Steves & Sons, the city’s longest-running builder and supplier of goods, according to Yoxall.
“This is not your grandparents’ manufacturing facility,” Yoxall said. “The perception that folks [who are] considering the industry … about dangerous, dark, hot factories is just really not realistic.”
Design puzzle
RVK has a team of about 18 designers and others working on the JCB plant in addition to a new plant for Bill Miller’s on the West Side of San Antonio and several other manufacturing projects.
“It might not sound as sexy as maybe some other [architecture] work, but industrial and manufacturing is putting so much into these, not just to build whatever it is they’re building, but the amenities to support it and to attract talent and keep it,” said Heath Wenrich, architect/principal at RVK. “It really kind of takes it up a notch.”
That makes it a very different design puzzle than an office building, he said. In manufacturing, efficiency and flexibility are design requirements.
But like an office building, most factories also have amenities and aesthetics built in to attract and support workers. JCB Operations Director David Carver said he has been meeting with workforce groups and potential employees in San Antonio, and asking what they’d like to see in the plant.
Carver said some of the feedback has centered on workers’ shifts and also air quality in the factory. People don’t want to work in the heat, he said. “It’s just about making sure that we give a nice environment for people to work.”
Many international companies have a standard look for their factories that’s replicated on every site. For example, every JCB site has a water feature in front of the building, some recreational and others decorative. San Antonio’s will be filled with reclaimed water from the building’s air conditioners.
Keeping things the same also streamlines maintenance, Wenrich said.
Machines and energy
Infrastructure to support energy use, and the type of machinery that will be installed, are probably the biggest considerations for any industrial plant, said RVK senior associates Rodney Fontana and Juan Medrano.
For that reason, the design team usually includes engineers of all kinds — structural, civil, mechanical, electrical and plumbing. “Occasionally we have to bring in acoustical engineers, telecom consultants, kitchen consultants,” Fontana said.
Engineers help to calculate the size and weight of equipment, for instance, to determine the depth and shape of the foundation to support the weight, often while the manufacturing machines are still being designed and built.
“We have to plan for what they’re potentially giving us because what they’re buying isn’t off the shelf,” Fontana said.
A company’s other factories can serve as a model — for what to design but also how to improve on it, he said, factoring in ways the new factory can efficiently adapt to future product lines and technology.
Such upgrades can be costly. Toyota announced in June it would spend $531 million to add 500,000 square feet to the plant it opened in 2006.
Factory design requires a combination of various kinds of spaces — from an employee cafeteria, training space and locker rooms to reception and administrative offices and production lines.
“So all of those things have to meld together in this plan,” Wenrich said. “And when you’re talking about a building that is 800-foot long by 900-foot, we’re printing out some pretty big sheets of paper.”
