High Explosives Production Facility
Austin Powder Company
Projects > High Explosives Production Facility
Austin Powder Company
Austin Powder Company realized the need in their industry for increased Energetic Material (EM) supply due to the dwindling supply of demilitarized materials available. As a result, the company decided build a new chemical facility for making virgin EM. After researching and selecting key technology partners, SSOE was chosen to provide engineering, architecture, and construction management services to integrate and implement the project.
This project involved a greenfield plant for the semi-continuous manufacture of Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) within an existing production facility. This facility performs blending and packaging of explosives, but had no chemical synthesis capability. We worked with Austin Powder and industry experts to design a safe, efficient production facility with custom processing equipment and process modules for the processing and re-use of spent chemicals and wastes.
Our team was responsible for integrating specialty process equipment from three separate process technology vendors in three different countries. Key to this integration was coordination of process controls and utilities requirements across the major vendor packages, ensuring a smooth startup and allowing for safe shutdown and maintenance during weekends, holidays, and major process upsets.
SSOE’s design scope included an EM manufacturing and packaging building; site preparation, foundation, and interconnect for all vendor modules; chemical loading, offloading, and storage; fresh and spent process water treatment; utilities to support 24/7 operation without city water or sewer access and with minimal environmental impact; rail and tank truck access for multiple chemicals; safety reviews and environmental permitting.
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SSOE is actively piloting AI Chat large language models (LLMs) or copilots that use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to streamline both design and development tasks, transforming how our teams interact with software and each other.
By integrating chat LLM engines into platforms like Revit, we’re enabling users to prompt complex actions using simple, conversational commands. In Revit, this means automating tasks such as modeling elements, cleaning up parameter data, managing annotations and dimensions, and organizing sheets—without writing scripts. These automations and quality prompts can be shared across project teams, accelerating workflows and reducing manual effort.
Similarly, our internal Software Development Community is leveraging GitHub Copilot to expedite coding tasks. Developers can generate and refine code using NLP prompts, tapping into GitHub’s extensive Repo to move faster from concept to implementation.
Together, these tools represent a shift from traditional, expert-driven scripting to intuitive, AI-assisted automation, unlocking new levels of efficiency and scalability across our projects.
SSOE is utilizing Microsoft Copilot Edge and M365 to significantly enhance work efficiency and accuracy across various departments. Copilot is accessible to all staff after training. Key areas of application include using it as a writing assistant, for idea generation, document summarization and generation, research assistant, excel assistant, programming code assistant, language translations, product comparison and data analysis. Use of Copilot has become part of the everyday life of SSOE employees who have identified key ways it can help them become more efficient with their daily tasks as well as more accurate in their deliverables.
Today, 100% of SSOE employees have taken the voluntary training and have access to Copilot Edge, achieving early our October 1, 2025 goal.
We found ourselves in need of a more robust tool to enhance resource forecasting and staff assignment capabilities. Instead of waiting for the perfect tool, we’re building it. SSOE’s in-house technology team has developed and piloted a tool that aims to forecast optimal staff mix and duration for new projects against existing workload to better understand capacity and manage resources efficiently. Additionally, the tool will allow teams to identify gaps to optimal staff mix.
SSOE has developed a proof-of-concept to use an AI Agent to act as a Master Engineer and Architect trained in SSOE’s processes, best-known-methods, and trainings. Our data structure is being remodeled to enable better use of our proprietary knowledge to train the agent on the ‘SSOE way’.
We helped our client visualize and optimize façade design for occupant comfort—long before breaking ground through the use of the Autodesk Forma tool. It allows the designer to rapidly experiment with the building’s geometry and façade design to promote sustainability, prioritizing quality of spaces and comfort for end uses, especially in extreme climates (daylighting and microclimate analysis tools) at the project’s exact geographic location, using location-specific environmental data.
Discover how SSOE is using Autodesk Forma to improve sustainability outcomes for industrial projects: SSOE Group: Improving sustainability outcomes for industrial projects with Autodesk Forma.
Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) is SSOE’s enterprise-wide project delivery platform. We partner with the Autodesk Product team and have research access. Use of the AI Assistant allows our design teams, owners, and general contractors the ability to query the project specifications for quality, answers, and more rapid responses to RFIs, submittals, or issues.