The U.S. State Department has awarded a $131 million contract to a design-and-construction team that includes Integrus Architecture PS, of Spokane, as the architect of record for a new U.S. embassy compound to be constructed in the northwestern African country of Mauritania.

Three other Spokane companies, MW Consulting Engineers PS, Coffman Engineers Inc., and SPVV Landscape Architects, are subcontractors on the project, which will be erected by Montgomery Ala.-based Caddell Construction Co, says Marcine Herron, an Integrus spokeswoman.

The embassy will be in the city of Nouakchott, which is on Mauritania’s Atlantic coast. Mauritania, an oil-producing Islamic Republic with a population of about 3.5 million, also is bordered by the countries of Senegal, Mali, Algeria, and the disputed Western Sahara territory.

The main structure in the embassy complex will be a 95,800-square-foot office building, Herron says.

The 10.5-acre compound also will include a U.S. Marine residence, a warehouse, maintenance facilities, perimeter security, access pavilions, recreation facilities, and a utility building, says the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Op-erations, which will oversee the facilities.

The bureau’s mission is to provide secure and functional facilities that represent the U.S. government and support its foreign policy objectives.

The project is expected to be completed in less than three years, Herron says.

“They go up really fast,” she says. 

The Mauritania compound is the 14th embassy project that Integrus has designed, Herron says.