US Army breaks ground on substantial Fort Bliss 3D printed barracks extension Construction 3D Printing

ICON, an Austin, Texas-based 3D printed construction company, has started work on 10 barracks buildings at Fort Bliss, Texas, that will house 560 soldiers in open bays by August. 

The $87 million project, which uses large robotic systems operating around the clock, costs roughly one-fifth of what a comparable traditional build would run, according to Jordan Gillis, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.

The project continues the expansion of 3D printed structures on the US Army site, after three barracks – each holding up to 72 soldiers – were inaugurated last year.

Ten Vulcan printers are on site, laying a specialized concrete blend in thin sequential layers. ICON previously built similar structures for a Texas National Guard training site in 2021.

The urgency for new housing at Fort Bliss stemmed from the Army’s southwest border mission, which began last year under presidential orders. The influx of troops created what Major General Curtis Taylor, Commander of the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss, described as an “acute shortage” of barracks.

The Army initially asked ICON to have new barracks operational within a year before requesting the timeline be cut to six months, said Jason Ballard, CEO of ICON, who dispatched a larger fleet of robots working 24-hour shifts to meet the compressed schedule. It’s an approach Ballard said would not be feasible with traditional construction crews due to physical limitations and noise constraints.

“We have been building the same way for a thousand years. It has gotten us this far, but we’re running into the limits of those ways of building,” Ballard said. “The way we are building is too slow, too expensive, too frail, and is now holding us back from our potential as a society and a military. We have service members living in quarters decades past their lifespan.”

Once the Fort Bliss project wraps up, ICON’s robot fleet will move to Fort Polk, Louisiana, to build housing at the Joint Readiness Training Center. The company recently unveiled technology enabling multistory construction and is in discussions with the Army about longer-term permanent housing. 

Fort Bliss supports up to 50,000 deploying troops annually, meaning demand for the barracks will persist well beyond the current border deployment.

“Last year, the Secretary of the Army [Dan Driscoll] challenged us to break free from legacy processes and embrace speed over bureaucracy,” Taylor said. “Today, the project behind me stands as visible proof that real change is happening across the Army.”

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Author: Joseph Caron-Dawe