Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Washington leadership attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Feb. 6 commemorating the completion of Charles L. Rice Hall on the campus of Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

The 6,200 square foot, state-of-the-art facility was budgeted at $6.3 million and will be used for academic discussion, ceremonies, lectures, conferences, small group discussion, large-scale tabletop exercises, and assembly. Charles L. Rice Hall, is named for USUHS’s fifth president, who served 2005-2016, and whose numerous contributions to the university are now memorialized with this significant addition to the university.

Cmdr. Marc Bernath, NAVFAC Washington public works officer, Public Works Department Bethesda, addressed the standing-room-only crowd on behalf of NAVFAC Washington.

“We worked hard together as a team, NAVFAC Washington, USUHS and [G-W Management Services] to deliver the project both on time and on budget,” Bernath said. “It was vitally important to our customer. Since it was important to them, it was important to us. We actually staffed up for the project and had a dedicated team of construction managers, as well as engineer technicians.”

The facility, constructed with energy conservation features, is designed to divide into three separate classroom/meeting spaces that will hold 288 students with seating for 600, and when fully open, the Hall will have space for 750. Audiovisual system capabilities mimic space layout conditions: when the partition walls are deployed, the system can support three separate spaces with three distinct needs. There are two projector screens in the front of the Hall and eight, 80-inch monitors configured so each section, when partitioned, will have two monitors mounted and two monitors on carts to support the university’s educational mission. Mobile lecterns will be used to maintain space flexibility. The Hall also has recording capabilities to capture lectures/presentations.

The facility was designed and built by RRMM Architects and G-W Management Services through NAVFAC Washington. The project was awarded in Sept. 2018 and completed on Jan. 31.

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