Boeing Opens Gresham Facility

Boeing celebrated the opening of its new parts processing center and building expansion in Gresham, OR, a suburb of Portland. Employing about 1,800 people, Boeing Portland is an ISO 14001-certified site that serves as the company's Center of Excellence for complex machining, gear systems and flight controls.

Elected officials and representatives from community and business groups and construction companies joined Boeing employees to commemorate the opening.

"This new facility and expansion project represents the state-of- the-art in metal parts finishing," says Perry Moore, Boeing Portland general manager. "Not only is it a tangible representation of the confidence The Boeing Company places in the Portland workforce, it also represents an environmentally progressive and efficient production model for other manufacturing facilities to follow."

Employees at the 64,000ft² (5,946m²)processing center will use the latest Lean processes and tools to efficiently process machined parts destined for all Boeing 7-series airplanes assembled and delivered in Everett and Renton, WA, as well as Boeing South Carolina.

The building was designed and built to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold standard while the 34,000ft² (3,159m²) expansion of another site building was completed to the LEED Silver standard, Boeing's required standard for all new construction and expansion projects. 

LEED is a program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and is the U.S. benchmark for sustainable building design, construction and operation. The LEED certification process verifies that a building is designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance in terms of site development, energy savings, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, water efficiency, improved indoor environmental quality and increased recycling and materials reuse.

LEED strategies employed on the new processing facility include skylights, a reflective roof, light-emitting diode (LED) parking lot lights, and water conserving landscaping consisting of native plant species, recycled and salvaged building materials, and enhanced environmental controls.

The Boeing Portland facility ranks as one of the largest profile milling facilities in the world and produces some of the most critical machined parts and structures for Boeing jetliners, including the all-new 787 Dreamliner.