Fairchild Air Force Base is in the design phase of a planned three-story, 79,400-square-foot dormitory to be used by students of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course.

Plans for the building include 150 double-occupancy, dorm-style rooms, each with private bathroom, as well as community spaces, including a laundry room, computer labs, lounges, and a residential kitchen.

 “The new dormitory is an upgrade in the quality of life for our airmen,” says Lt. Col. Erik Haynes, operations officer for the 66th Training Squadron, at Fairchild. “The new facility will eliminate the requirement for triple bunking students while at the same time affording them space to store all of their field equipment in a collocated storage area.”

Spokeswoman 2nd Lt. Kaila Bryant, media operations section chief at Fairchild, says the SERE project has an estimated value of $10 million and currently is being designed by the Seattle and the Kansas City district offices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The dormitory project is currently in the solicitation process for the initial round of qualified candidates and is expected to go out for bids later this year, with construction likely to begin in 2019 and to be completed by 2020.

The project also will include some exterior site work, such as landscaping, sidewalks and pathways, lighting, fencing, a parking lot, and an entry drop-off point.

Bryant says the new facility will be built on what’s known as the SERE complex, a separate area of the base reserved specifically for the 336th Training Group, which operates the SERE school.

The 336th Training Group consists of three squadrons: the 66th Training Squadron, the 22nd Training Squadron and the 336th Training Support Squadron, with geographically separated detachments at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The survival school teaches 19 different courses to about 20,000 students at the three locations annually.