Science | Technology

Built in Lockheed Martin’s former rocket assembly building, the GPS III Processing Facility (GPF) spans nearly 50,000 square feet of assembly and test areas for new GPS III satellites. The facility features an industry-leading production line that enables highly efficient manufacturing of GPS III satellites. The facility includes:

A 32,900-square-foot, SCIF-level, Class 100,000 cleanroom high bay that serves as the “factory floor” and houses assembly stations, a solar array test fixture, and a space vehicle transfer fixture
A 960-square-foot thermal vacuum chamber that simulates the conditions of space for testing purposes
A 2,880-square-foot, two-story anechoic test chamber that allows for testing of antennas and telemetry equipment without sound or electromagnetic interference

The GPS III program replaced aging GPS satellites while improving capability to meet the evolving needs of military, commercial, and civilian users worldwide. GPS III satellites deliver enhanced accuracy and improved anti-jamming capability, extend the spacecraft’s design life, and add a new civil signal interoperable with international global navigation satellite systems.

As the project’s electrical engineer, RMH designed normal and backup power systems, lighting, grounding, fire alarm system detection and notification, lightning protection, access control, and public address systems for this critical facility.

Photo credit: Lockheed Martin Space Systems

The Alexander Dawson School Innovation Center represents a comprehensive approach to K-12 science education, featuring specialized learning environments designed to support the school’s innovative curriculum. The 24,000-square-foot, three-story building houses science classrooms and laboratories, as well as a shared makerspace with associated wood and metal shops and storage areas.

The Innovation Center serves as both an educational hub and campus welcome center, creating the first destination for visitors and prospective students. The facility incorporates four high school-level laboratories, three middle school-level laboratories, one K-5-level laboratory, computer labs, and specialized workshop spaces. The building design emphasizes visual connections to the outdoors and campus features while putting internal activities on display through intentional transparency.

The facility achieved LEED Gold certification, reflecting the project’s commitment to sustainable design principles. The building functions are integrated into the campus landscape, creating a cohesive educational environment that aligns facilities with the school’s divisions and departments.

As the project’s mechanical and electrical engineer, RMH provided mechanical and electrical design services, including AV/IT/security systems, and bid and construction-phase services. The design emphasized low energy use by evaluating multiple HVAC system options to optimize performance and efficiency for specialized laboratory and educational spaces.

Wells Concrete’s new Brighton facility consolidates two existing Denver locations into a single, comprehensive manufacturing operation to enhance production capability and flexibility for the Denver market. The 122,673-square-foot precast facility sits on 64.5 acres and features year-round indoor production capabilities for architectural precast and outdoor structural forms, with lifting capacity upgraded from 15-ton to 25-ton cranes to accommodate larger products and higher volumes.

The manufacturing facility incorporates long-line prestressing forms and an expanded inventory of movable forms to meet diverse project demands. The versatile production facility enables identical product manufacturing with consistent quality while maintaining flexibility to meet demanding schedules and minimize project risk. The specialized facility includes a 4,500-square-foot mold shop, steel shop, lunchroom, office, maintenance bays, boiler and air-compressor room, production area, beam bed/storage area, tool room, QC lab, chemical storage area, and washroom.

As the project’s mechanical and electrical engineer, RMH provided mechanical and electrical design and construction-phase services for the new concrete pre-stress plant. Services included chilled water, steam, compressed air, power, and natural gas systems to support the specialized manufacturing operations.

BAE System’s specialized testing and manufacturing facilities support critical space missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) program. The 4,042-square-foot clean/non-destructive test lab was developed to thoroughly clean and test critical flight hardware for national asset programs. As the next-generation Hubble Telescope, the infrared JWST enables astronomers to study the entire history of the universe. The lab’s built-in flexibility accommodates testing and cleaning for other satellite missions as well.

The lab’s large parts spray room, where bulkier flight hardware is cleaned with hazardous solvents, features an innovative air-diffusion system that delivers evenly distributed, cleanroom-quality airflow. This system moves vapors away from staff and limits flammability risks. Building Information Modeling (BIM) software was used to design large, complex ductwork for the small ceiling plenums in the spray rooms. Additional safety measures include applying intrinsically safe process piping controls to limit voltages in the presence of flammable vapors and developing a chemical container emergency depressurization system.

As the project’s mechanical and electrical engineer, RMH designed custom air systems to address the limited plenum space. The design incorporated vertical unidirectional airflow using fan-filter units, a custom hood, hazardous exhaust systems, and point-of-use laboratory systems, including nitrogen, house vacuum, deionized water, and dust collection. Electrical systems included electrostatic discharge protection, heavy power for support equipment, photosensitive “yellow” lighting, branch grounding, and overhead hoist electrical systems.

The Space Operations Simulation Center (SOSC) provides an ultra-stable environment for developing, evaluating, and testing precision instruments and navigation systems for space vehicles. Sophisticated facilities enable full- and sub-scale simulations of ranging, rendezvous, docking, imaging, descent, and landing operations—all of which are necessary for the success of manned and robotic missions to Earth-orbiting platforms and celestial bodies. The 41,000-square-foot building includes a 16,000-square-foot high bay with a robot wing and an airlock, four mission operations centers, two control rooms, a two-story lobby, and support spaces.

RMH’s role for this fast-track project included electrical/lighting design, lighting modeling, energy modeling, and LEED consulting. RMH met the challenge of spearheading the LEED effort for a project with an accelerated schedule and complex technical spaces not typical for a LEED-targeted facility. The facility achieved LEED-NC Gold certification.

In a related project, our engineers designed a 50-foot-tall, six-degree-of-freedom robot system used to design and test autonomous spacecraft guidance systems within the SOSC facility. The high-precision robot maneuvers and docks full-scale spacecraft mock-ups with minimal deflection under load. The design included a unique 2,000-psi hydraulic counterbalance system that supports the vertical-axis platform’s 36,000-pound mass.

Photo credit: Lockheed Martin Space Systems

STAQ Pharma is transforming pediatric healthcare by addressing a critical gap in the pharmaceutical supply chain: the availability of sterile, small-dose medications for children. At its cutting-edge 18,400-square-foot cGMP 503B outsourcing facility in Colorado, this innovative startup repackages adult-dose medications into precise pediatric doses using advanced robotic automation. These smaller doses are essential for pre-operative, operative, and post-operative procedures in pediatric care.
The facility includes 5,000 square feet of highly automated cleanroom space designed to meet the highest standards for sterile-to-sterile drug repackaging. Robotic systems ensure exceptional sterility, accuracy, and efficiency, helping STAQ Pharma deliver safer and more reliable medications for pediatric patients.

To support this pharmaceutical-grade environment, the HVAC system maintains an ISO 7 cleanroom classification through a cascading clean-to-dirty pressure hierarchy. Inside the robotics enclosure, conditions are even more stringent, achieving ISO 5 classification. Energy-efficient design strategies, including variable airflow modes for occupied and idle states, enable significant energy savings while maintaining strict air-change requirements.

This project advances high-power electric vehicle (EV) charging by developing a megawatt-scale battery emulation framework at the Flatirons Campus. The system enables real-time testing of EV charging scenarios, focusing on integration with renewable energy and grid infrastructure.

At its core is a custom-designed MWh-scale lithium-ion battery emulator that replicates the dynamic behavior of various battery chemistries used in heavy-duty vehicles and stationary storage. Using Digital Real-Time Simulators, hardware-in-the-loop techniques, and grid simulators, the team built a robust platform for evaluating charge/discharge cycles and system-level interactions.

This infrastructure supports research in Vehicle Grid Integration, Behind-the-Meter assets, and Distributed Energy Resource applications, paving the way for more innovative and resilient EV-grid ecosystems.

RMH provided comprehensive electrical, mechanical, and plumbing engineering services for a new 43,000-square-foot, two-story facility supporting global scientific field missions. The building, more than twice the size of its 1970s predecessor, includes offices, electronic and wet laboratories, an ITAR-controlled warehouse, and connects to two existing aircraft hangars.

Both hangars support NCAR’s Gulfstream V and C-130 research aircraft. RMH’s electrical design scope included:

Upgrading Hangar A’s electrical service from 120/208V to 277/480V
Power and lighting design for a new locker room in Hangar B
Integrated lighting and controls design throughout the facility

This facility enhances NCAR’s ability to support airborne research and innovation worldwide.

At NREL’s Flatiron Campus, cutting-edge research focuses on testing emerging wind technologies and accelerating their market availability. Researchers conduct a series of tests and accurate transient simulation studies to understand how individual wind turbines handle grid disturbances. Field testing wind turbines can be both expensive and time-consuming.

RMH’s Controllable Grid Interface Row 1 (CGI-1) test system design supports this process by significantly reducing the time and cost of testing wind turbines by enabling controlled laboratory testing. The 9 MW CGI combines hardware and real-time control software, operating with existing 2.5 MW and 5 MW dynamometer facilities (also partially designed by RMH). This setup simulates grid disturbances on wind turbine terminals and estimates the impacts of turbine responses on the grid. The CGI test system project created the first U.S. test facility with fault-simulation capabilities and the only system globally fully integrated with two dynamometers designed to work with four types of wind turbines, including the largest wind turbine drivetrains used in land-based markets. The CGI-2 project enhanced the campus’s capabilities by increasing connected grid power from 9 MW to 19.9 MW, complying with local utility requirements.

RMH also designed the electrical and communications infrastructure to connect dynamometers used for testing wind turbine drivetrain components with the grid and fault simulation areas. This infrastructure features ride-through capability and safely withstands abnormal grid conditions such as faults. RMH configured the CGI system flexibly to connect multiple test objects, including utility-scale wind turbines, other renewable energy generation systems like photovoltaic arrays, and grid-scale energy storage units.

The Lockheed Martin Space Systems Gateway Center at the Waterton Canyon campus marks a significant leap in satellite production capabilities. This $350 million, 266,000-square-foot facility focuses on designing, manufacturing, and testing satellites. Within its expansive layout, 175,000 square feet of SCIF support secure operations for national security missions.

The Gateway Center features a high bay Class 100k clean room, enabling the simultaneous construction and testing of large and small satellites. It also houses a large thermal vacuum chamber that replicates the harsh conditions of space, allowing for rigorous satellite testing prior to launch. Complementing these facilities is a sizable anechoic chamber for safely testing satellite antennas, sensors, and communication systems, as well as a large volume airlock that streams the departure of completed spacecraft in a controlled, clean environment.

The project includes redundant power systems, uninterruptible power supplies, generators, and a central utility plant, achieved through meticulously coordinating highly technical equipment.