On August 13th 2022, Team 2481 started construction of our new building, the Roboteers Robotics Center, colloquially which we call “the building”. We secured our occupancy permit on January 4th 2023, three days before the 2023 season began.
What makes this project particularly unique among FRC buildings is to keep costs down, we did almost all of the sourcing and labor ourselves.
Many teams have asked for details on the design process, fundraising process, construction process, building attributes, and budget, so now that we have had some time to cool down from the season, we wanted to share the process for how it came to be.
Who are the Roboteers?
The team has been operating since 2008. Besides a strong run in 2016, we have had several recent interesting robots. We also host the Roboteer Rumble each year. 2481 is based in Tremont, IL and is open to students from any area that want to join.
The team is a 501(c)3 with our own insurance and accounting. It is a pseudo-community team – we are based on school grounds and slightly over half of our students typically come from Tremont and the rest typically from the greater Peoria IL area. It is a close community where many folks have experience in a variety of different trades. Major local industries include Heavy Industry (Caterpillar, various machine shops and parts manufacturing), Ag Tech (Precision Planting, 360 Yield Center, ReFire Solutions), and Healthcare (OSF). The team typically goes to two regionals, though we have occasionally done a third (ex. 2022).
The team had a contract with the school to use our prior space, and now has a land lease with the school for the space where we built the building. The school also helps cover our utilities, provides bus access, and allows us to reserve and use other rooms within the school, but does not provide cash sponsorship.
Team 2481 Workspace History
Before the building , Team 2481 worked directly out of Tremont High School. When it began, the team worked out of a closet and classroom, then slowly expanded to take over the industrial tech space when those classes got cut. By the time we started building the building, the team had about 1,600 square ft of machining, assembly and classroom space, and used the adjacent gym for practice (having to roll out and set up game elements every day).
Image of the old shop:
Inspiration
The team had been interested in its own space even dating back to 2014, when the team began saving our surplus annually to invest in future infrastructure and had roughly $45,000 to invest from the team fund by May 2022.
Chief reasons for building the building include:
- More space for team growth
- Enhance access to technology to create development opportunities for our existing student base
- Improve visibility of the team throughout our community
In 2021 the team opted to build a very simple robot mechanically, so the mentors had a lot of extra time on their hands at the shop. Starting inspiration for the building came from the Lockwood STEM Center (which you can read about here). We had an initial meeting with the school to see if they would be receptive to the idea, which they were. Over the next 16 months, we continued to iterate on the design, then in October 2021 started developing materials and a website for a future fundraising campaign. At this point however, we were not sure if this was an idea that was one year out or multiple years out.
Fundraising & Design
In May 2022, the school let us know that they were interested in reclaiming our space to launch an industrial tech program for the 2022-2023 school year. At that point, we knew we had to get started, as the pressure was starting for us to leave our existing space. Though they wanted our space back, the school was very supportive of the building and agreed to a very generous land lease. We used May to early August to get approval from the school, town zoning board, school board, and the regional office of education.
We finalized our building design and obtained several quotes. After receiving several back that were $500k+, we felt that our chances of fundraising to that level were slim, though we felt we could reach the $250k-$300k range if we included the $45k that the team had been saving for investing in infrastructure. We also thought we could get generous community support for equipment, so from there we decided to build it ourselves. We kick-started the fundraising campaign we had planned out from six months prior, receiving some private commitments from mentors and other community supporters to help as seed funding for the campaign. A big portion of these private commitments was matched donations through the Caterpillar Foundation, since many of our supporters are associated with Caterpillar in some way. This got us to ~$175k of the estimated $250k-$300k needed, and subsequently after our other local supporters realized this was real, we brought in enough to make the project successful.
Before and throughout construction, there are a number of considerations we needed to consider. These included, but were not limited to, ADA requirements, approval and sign-off of individual parts of the building by various local entities, and State of Illinois commercial building requirements. One of our alumni/mentors works for an architectural firm, so we contracted with his firm for putting together drawings and a permit.
From there we also contracted structural engineering drawings. We designed the building to be primarily a wood frame, with 8ft exterior column spacing 4ft-on-center trusses. We used Perma-columns for the bottoms of the columns, that way we could set and align those properly and raise the walls/columns later.
Other sets of drawings we obtained during the May - August prep were plans for our in-floor heating system, plumbing drawings, and a plan for our fire alarm system.
We acquired a number of new tools for the operation, including a nice set from Milwaukee that we continue to use with the team:
Starting Construction
On August 13th 2022, we broke ground. We were generously loaned skid steers from 2 different sponsors and a bulldozer from one student’s grandfather for leveling the site. From there we layed out and augered holes for column footings at every 8 ft.
We hired a concrete truck to come help us pour the footings. After the concrete cured, we set the permacolumns and installed an exterior skirtboard. We trenched around the exterior of the building, where we added foam board to help with exterior insulation for the floor. We added the below-the-floor plumbing and electrical. We leveled the ground with sand, then covered it with foam insulation, spaced rebar on 2ft centers, and attached our in-floor heating tubes with 1ft spacing to the rebar.
After the in-floor heating was installed, we proceeded to pour the floor. This was one area where we contracted a local company for leveling. Following concrete pouring, we did set up and pour the concrete for our sidewalk and driveway ourselves.
Following the concrete floor, we started construction of the walls and columns. We built the columns in our shop, then transferred them to the build site and built the walls on the ground. We then lifted the walls into the air with a boom truck. After three walls were up, we hung trusses and started attaching purlins (crossbeams for the roof). This was a very long process and required a lot of time in the air.
To help facilitate this process, we were able to borrow a diesel all-terrain lift for the duration of the project, which we used to lift building materials into the air and transfer to high locations where they needed to be attached. We also borrowed three flat-surface lifts which could be used on the concrete surfaces and the interior of the building (once built).
Once the wood structure was up, the next step was screwing down the steel roof, house wrapping the building, and putting steel and on the sides and rear. We waited on the front, since the windows and garage door didn’t come in until almost Thanksgiving due to supply constraints. We were able to frame the windows and doors, so when windows and doors came in, we were able to install them quickly.
Luckily after we screwed several thousand screws into the roof, we only had one leak, which was quickly fixed.
From there, most work was interior – We attached a moisture barrier to the roof and started constructing the classroom/mezzanine structure. We found a major discount on insulation, so we started to apply that to the walls, then cover that with a moisture barrier. We used the large all-terrain lift to add a steel ceiling to the interior, so it was ready to be insulated. We were able to borrow a blow-in insulation truck for a weekend, which was really handy as it really sped up blowing the insulation around the ceiling.
Several exterior hookups were added by early December, including having our electric line ran by Ameren from the nearest pole and attaching our sewer/water lines into the school’s system. By late December we had also tied our fire alarm system into the school’s and added our internet hookup.
We added the rest of the rooms and the stairs – utility room, two bathrooms, and a conference room. We also installed stairs to access the mezzanine. Our in-floor heating boiler was installed, as well as the rest of the plumbing for our serving area in the classroom and the bathrooms.
After the windows and doors came in, we were able to finish off the exterior steel. All the lighting was donated, so we ran some tests with the lifts to see which fixtures should be used where in the building. We finished off the moisture barrier and started drywalling the rooms. From there, we started painting and finishing off the remaining electrical and other details
We moved our equipment the first week of January, then subsequently got our occupancy permit the Thursday before kickoff (January 5th - less than 5 months since we broke ground). It was pretty thrilling to get it all locked up just before we needed it. In total, almost all the work was done by us or folks who were friends, alumni, parents, or supporters of 2481.
Windows, several interior doors and some interior finishes were completed during the first couple weeks of build season (as they weren’t required for occupancy). We bought a new compressor, since the one in our old shop was owned by the school.
Now having used it for a season, the building is awesome. It gives us the space and infrastructure to do many things we couldn’t in our old space, which allows us to expand access to our students and helps to highlight the team within our community. We held an open house shortly before the Central Illinois Regional that drew around 250 attendees to the building, which only bodes well for the future
Final cost numbers for the building (end of 2023 season):
- Frame: $52k
- Foundation: $46k
- Interior & Exterior Skin: $45k
- Insulation: $17k
- Electrical: $14k
- Plumbing: $14k
- Doors: $11k
- In-Floor Heating: $11k
- Windows: $8k
- Interior Finish: $8k
- AV, IT & Security: $8k
- Fire Alarm: $6k
- Hardware: $5k
- Architectural / Engineering: $5k
- Tools: $5k
- General / Misc: $4k
Total: $262k
Additional in-kind that made the building possible
- Almost all equipment use
- Trenching for the electric line
- Fiber line run and installation
- About $9k of electric equipment and installation
- Several parts of the sound system and drop ceiling
- LED lighting
We received some additional sponsorship for the building from our fundraising efforts, so we are working on a number of projects:
- Enhancements to classroom/serving area
- Sound control for compressor / extra utility room for electric panel & boiler
- Storage enhancements more optimized for our current space
- Soda fountain installation
- Adding infrastructure to hold the 136” LED wall we purchased to enhance Roboteer Rumble
- Possibly other improvements?
We couldn’t have pulled this off without our amazing sponsors and volunteers. They are awesome, and put forward so much in resources and time to make this happen.
As we make additional enhancements that we think are cool, I’ll drop them in this thread so those interested can check them out. Feel free to ask any questions around how or why we structured things the way we did, happy to provide details.
