MAPP part of joint venture tapped for LSU Taylor Hall construction

Skanska USA announced this morning that it has signed a $54 million contract to handle the renovation and expansion of Patrick F. Taylor Hall on the LSU campus. Skanska USA, whose parent company is headquartered in Sweden, says it will construct the project in a 70/30 joint venture with Baton Rouge-based MAPP Construction. Construction of the expansion to Taylor Hall—which will add approximately 126,000 square feet of classrooms, student support areas, engineering wet labs, office space, research labs and a new 200-seat auditorium—is set to begin in November. Work to renovate the existing building will begin in January, Skanska says. The LSU College of Engineering will see its available space in the hall, which currently measures about 306,000 square feet, double when the project is completed in June 2017. LSU announced in February that the College of Engineering had exceeded a $50 million fundraising goal for the project since launching the effort in January 2013. The state is matching all privately raised funds for the project, with Gov. Bobby Jindal having already pledged a minimum of $50 million in state funds. “We are pleased to be working again with Skanska, as they successfully performed construction management for us on the University Medical Center in New Orleans, which had a $1.1 billion budget and a tight time frame,” says Danny Mahaffey, director of facility planning at LSU, in a prepared statement. See a rendering of the new Patrick F. Taylor Hall building. —Steve Sanoski