The U.S. General Services Administration announced its intent to hire a manager for the design and construction of a new Tier III data center at the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, Colo., earlier this week. As of Friday, it was not clear whether the administration had awarded the contract for the design and construction work itself but about 70 firms have expressed interest in the project since it was announced in July.

GSA estimated the project to cost between $65 million and $80 million. It will be paid for by the funds set aside by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The administration plans to build the two-story facility in phases, using the POD (performance optimized data center) approach to scale out gradually. Two data center stories and a mechanical basement will total about 140,000 square feet.

Among companies that responded to the administration's original "sources sought" notice for design and construction of the new data center were EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Skanska and Panduit. GSA plans for the design process to start in February 2010 and to break ground on Phase 1 in May of that year.

The project has to achieve LEED Silver certification by the U.S. Green Building Council and incorporate Low Impact Development strategies. The contractor will also be required to work with artists to support the administration's Art in Architecture program. GSA commissions large-scale works of art for new federal buildings from American artists under the program.

Another major federal data center project in the works was announced last month by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The army issued a "sources sought" notice, requesting letters of interest from contractors willing to design and build a one-million-square-foot facility in Sandy, Utah, that would include 100,000 square feet of raised data center floor. The notice generated responses from 50 interested firms, including Skansa and Lee Technologies.

Last month Lee Technologies announced that it had won a bid on another federal government contract. The U.S. Department of Defense commissioned the vendor to build a containerized back-up power and cooling system for its Texas data center.