Balfour Beatty to Build New Blackbaud Corporate Campus in Charleston

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Holder Properties has selected Balfour Beatty Construction to build a new corporate campus for Blackbaud in Charleston, South Carolina. Headquartered in Charleston since 1989, Blackbaud is a provider of software and services for the global philanthropic community.

Blackbaud’s new corporate campus will consolidate its Charleston operations into one location situated on 13 acres in the Daniel Island community. Balfour Beatty has been contracted to build the project’s first phase consisting of a four-story, 172,000-square-foot office building and 650-space surface parking lot. Once complete, Blackbaud’s campus will provide a modern workplace for its employees, featuring a coffee and tea bar, game rooms, ergonomic work stations and bike racks. Further nurturing its employees’ active lifestyles, the campus will include outdoor recreation spaces, a basketball court, bocce ball court and hiking trails.

Designed by ASD | SKY to achieve LEED-certified criteria, the eco-friendly campus will include many sustainable, green building features such as car-charging stations, low-energy LED lighting and building materials using low-volatile organic chemicals. Native landscaping and an outdoor garden including fruit trees are planned for the exterior grounds.

The new campus will be high tech with features such as ideation and collaboration spaces outfitted with SMART boards, video conferencing and digital signage to foster employee creativity in support of the company’s innovative culture. The campus will also include a customer technology center designed to help incubate non-profit organizations. The company will also host local students on campus for Camp Blackbaud, its employee-led STEM program.

The latest technologies and Lean construction methods will be leveraged to achieve the project’s progressive environmental design. The building will be built using a tilt-wall structure with applied finishes such as tile and plaster to enhance the speed of construction and preserve the quality of construction along the way. Technologies will include building information modeling software and digital documents will enable the team to access real-time plans on the paperless project.

With site work underway, the first phase of the Blackbaud corporate campus is scheduled for completion in the first quarter 2018.