United Airlines Catering Operations Kitchen

This project entailed the conversion of a 153,000 square feet vacant storage space into a food catering operation for United Airlines in Newark, New Jersey. The design-build team transformed United’s new warehouse space into an all-inclusive food handling, preparation, and refrigerated catering facility. New food safety standards were also created to not only protect customers but employees as well. The new building presented challenges with minimal roof collateral loads, an available area that required adding about 35,000 square feet for mezzanine, and extensive roof-mounted refrigeration systems due to the limited space on grade. Additionally, the uncertainty brought on by COVID-19 required unique solutions to keep project team employees safe for the duration of the construction.

Tight Timeline Requires Maximum Design-Build Integration

United Airlines’ strict deadline to relocate operations from the Newark Airport property within a year required speed to deliver this project with innovative methods of coordination and sequencing between the builders and designers. Stakeholders on the team assisted the development of innovative solutions to new criteria while maintaining the project budget and schedule. Additional site encumbrances presented environmental condition challenges for specialty consultants and contractors. The design documents contained information from 3D BIM models and were coordinated in a virtual environment while placed in the field. The facility was designed to comfortably accommodate the next twenty years of projected growth and expansion. This ensures not only the long-term usability of the facility but also demonstrates United’s commitment to being an essential part of the Ironbound community.

Design-Build Team

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