Blue Origin Engine Facility

This facility houses the tooling, equipment and operations required to manufacture Blue Origin’s next generation rocket engines.
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Clayco and Lamar Johnson Collaborative delivered turnkey design, engineering and construction for this liquid fueled rocket engine manufacturing facility. The project is located in Cummings Research Park, Huntsville, Alabama and encloses over 300,000 square feet of state-of-the-art fabrication and manufacturing space and just under 100,000 square feet of Class-A engineering, collaboration and administrative office area. The building’s infrastructure is capable of receiving, manufacturing, fabricating, assembling, testing and shipping. With a significant amount of automation accounted for, machining, cleaning, assembly integration, avionics component building and testing, and advanced industrial welding were all part of the facilities process.

The full height, glass atrium main entrance is an extension of the people spaces that bisect the overall building length and height. This ‘spine’ connects operation areas on each side with building length, mezzanine and an observation platform. The height penetrates the roof providing continuous clerestory daylighting. Connectivity between engineering and manufacturing is enhanced by nearly continuous observation glass that minimizes physical separation. Collaboration is encouraged through numerous, common, large and small meeting and break areas located throughout the facility.

Staff and visitor amenities are continued outside with an inviting visitor entrance plaza and garden area on site. The garden provides walking paths, grilling and simple food prep, structures for shaded seating, picnicking and large gathering areas, and is adjacent to food truck parking space and open space for dog care.

Located on 46 acres, the manufacturing facility has been designed with the ability to perform incremental upgrades as the system matures.