UMass Dartmouth - Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center

Overview

The ATMC is a 60,000 SF incubator facility, the first of several buildings planned on the site of Fall River’s historic Kerr Mills that burned to the ground in 1987. MassDevelopment, the state’s economic development authority, spearheaded and financed the project, in collaboration with the City of Fall River and the Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center/ATMC at the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth.

SMMA was retained by MassDevelopment to provide programming, design, and engineering services for the design/build Request for Proposal (RFP). In order to ensure that the quality and programming standards established by the project team were forwarded in total to the design/build team, SMMA produced detailed and extensive documentation for the RFP including: scaled floorplans; full CSI specifications; exterior elevations; colored renderings; and, descriptive room data sheets.

SMMA’s extensive lab experience was key to developing and evaluating design options. The lab prototype accommodates important considerations such as safety, maintenance, liability, cross-contamination, flexibility, wet vs. dry labs, vibration sensitivity, and accessible utility tie-ins. The new building includes space for research in such diverse fields as optics, materials testing, and computer sciences, and is dedicated to fostering start-up enterprises and supporting local manufacturing businesses.