U.S. Department of Energy’s $224M Lab on South Table Mountain Tops Out
JE Dunn, SmithGroup, and NREL Celebrate EMAPS Facility Construction Milestone
The upcoming Energy Materials and Processing at Scale (EMAPS) Facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s South Table Mountain Campus in Golden, Colorado, has officially topped out. Led by JE Dunn Construction in partnership with SmithGroup, the $224 million design-build project will deliver a 129,000-square-foot, high-performance research facility for the U.S. Department of Energy. The laboratory will feature a sustainable design targeting LEED® Gold certification and will incorporate advanced efficiency measures such as heat recovery and gray water reuse. The project is being executed under NREL’s Cooperative Construction Contracting Approach (CCCA), which streamlines the contracting process for large-scale developments.
NREL EMAPS Construction Progress
Following the September 2024 groundbreaking, crews have made swift progress toward vertical construction. Structural steel installation has reached the topping-out milestone, with more than 200 team members, trade partners, and stakeholders gathering on-site to sign the final beam before it was hoisted into place. Work is now shifting toward the building envelope, with precast panels, framing, curtainwall, and window systems being installed in sequence. Inside, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing rough-ins are progressing floor by floor, while finish trades prepare materials for installation once walls are enclosed.
NREL EMAPS Facility to Support Engineering, Science, and Technology Programs
Once complete in 2027, EMAPS will provide state-of-the-art laboratory and high-bay pilot-scale spaces to support NREL’s Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences, Materials, Chemical and Computer Science, and Bio-Energy Science and Technology programs. The facility is designed to integrate manufacturing processes at scale, supporting research in areas such as advanced electrification, green process innovation, and industrial decarbonization. By creating new physical and functional connections across disciplines, EMAPS will strengthen NREL’s capacity to accelerate the transition from laboratory research to market-ready clean energy technologies.
