US AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

To design the new United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Training Facility in Arlington, Virginia, DBI tackled the task of situating an educational training center in the middle of a high-rise office building. A code analysis challenge, training centers have a much higher occupancy load than that of the typical office spaces for which a building is usually designed. After hours of code interpretation and number-crunching, DBI’s team added a two-hour–rated fire assembly, which separates the sixth floor in halves in the event of an emergency; expanded the women’s plumbing fixture count; and held three meetings with Arlington County—and, then, successfully obtained a permit for construction.

The 42,306-SF facility occupies the building’s sixth floor, where USAID personnel attend educational and continued learning programs, as well as a small suite on the fifth floor for business support functions. DBI created flexible spaces to accommodate the daily variations in USAID’s training schedule and courses, which include e-Learning classes; Foreign Service Training and Development courses, such as Food for Peace, Economics, Global Health, and Stabilization and Governance; Project Management Training; and Environment and Natural Resource Management.