Johnson Controls & Saft (JCS)
Meadowbrook Lithium-Ion Battery Plant
DiClemente Siegel Design has teamed up with Johnson Controls and Saft (JCS) to create a world-class lithium-ion battery plant in Holland, Michigan. The project includes the following to create a production and assembly environment for lithium-ion batteries for the plug-in hybrid and electric car markets:
• Build out of 129,000 SF into a new production manufacturing facility, including 35,000 SF of dry room/clean room space and a 14,000-SF office area
• New stand alone building for wet chemical storage and the mechanical and electrical central plant
• New stand alone building for dry chemical storage
• Construction of a new 20,000-SF special function building connected by walkways to the production facility
High volume production lithium-ion battery manufacturing does not yet exist in the United States and there is a race between battery manufacturers to build plants and infrastructure to support the demand for future electric vehicles in the US market. By converting an existing Johnson Controls facility, the company expects to have the Holland, Michigan plant in operation before the end of 2010 assembling packs with cell production to follow in early 2011. By next year, when production ramps up, the plant will employ about 550 employees and is projected to crank out 15 million lithium-ion cells annually to power the company’s global customers, including Ford for its first plug-in hybrid vehicle for 2012, Azure Dynamics for its 2010 launch of the next generation Balance™ Hybrid Electric commercial vehicle, Daimler AG, and BMW.
DSD has previously done work for JCI and performed well. DSD also has an extensive portfolio of successful and significant similar projects in which we were developing designs for large state of the art systems and production processes. JCS determined that our team has a depth of talent and proven ability to deliver.
In addition the DSD team created an innovative approach. Due to the aggressive schedule to get the facility up and running, JCS divided the project into two phases and 8 build packages for both the design and the construction of the new facility. DSD proposed to divide the project team into a number of smaller teams as we have done with great success on several other large projects with aggressive schedules.
