Secure facility
design and build.
A SCIF must be designed and built to ICD-705 and accredited by the cognizant Accrediting Official. Salian Defense designs the facility, manages cleared construction, and carries the project through accreditation and into operations as one provider, so the compliance discipline is continuous from the first drawing to the accredited space.
Who can design and build a SCIF?
A SCIF must be designed and built to ICD-705 and accredited by the cognizant Accrediting Official (AO). Salian Defense designs the facility, produces the compliant layout and drawings, manages cleared construction through its partner stack, and carries the project through accreditation and into operations as one provider.
That single accountable line is the point: the compliance discipline is continuous from the first drawing to the accredited space, instead of being handed across a designer, a builder, and an accreditation consultant who each own one link. You bring the contract. We do everything else.
Design. Build. Carry to accreditation. Operate.
The turnkey path moves through five phases, each tied to an ICD-705 gate. The table below maps each phase to what it produces and an indicative duration. Actual timing depends on protection level, size, and the accrediting authority's schedule.
| Phase | What happens | Indicative duration |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Requirements and concept | Define protection level, size, location, timeline, and sponsorship. Scope the requirement and return a budgetary ROM. | 2 to 6 weeks |
| 2. ICD-705 design and concept approval | Compliant layout, drawings, and Construction Security Plan, with concept approval from the AO/CSA before construction begins. | 1 to 4 months |
| 3. Cleared construction | Build to the approved design with cleared, licensed trades, construction security oversight, sound attenuation, and any RF or TEMPEST shielding verified by measurement. | 2 to 9 months |
| 4. Accreditation | Assemble the body of evidence, complete the Fixed Facility Checklist, and walk the package through inspection and AO/CSA sign-off. | 1 to 4 months |
| 5. Operations and sustainment | Stand up the security program and FSO support, then sustain through re-inspections, configuration changes, and re-accreditation. | Program life |
Durations are indicative and overlap in practice. Total time to accredited operation commonly runs 12 to 36 months, and less on suitable, pre-coordinated projects.
The standards that govern the build.
Intelligence Community Directive 705 and its Technical Specifications (the TSPM) govern the physical and technical construction of SCIFs, SAPFs, and closed areas: wall and ceiling assemblies, sound attenuation, intrusion detection, access control, and shielding where required.
The National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, codified at 32 CFR Part 117, governs how cleared contractors handle classified work, including the personnel and program requirements behind a facility clearance and the DD-254 that flows the security requirements down to a contract.
The Fixed Facility Checklist (FFC) documents the as-built facility against ICD-705, and the Construction Security Plan (CSP) governs how the space is protected during construction. Both are assembled as the work proceeds, not reconstructed at the end.
The cognizant Accrediting Official (AO) for the customer's program applies the standards, grants concept approval, inspects the completed space, and signs the accreditation. The package is built to what the AO will actually sign.
What causes secure facility projects to stall.
Stalled projects almost never have one dramatic cause. They have a class of problem that went unnamed for a few months while everyone worked around it, and by the time it surfaces the schedule has absorbed it and nobody can say where the time went.
The pattern is consistent. A requirement nobody wrote down. A design that was nearly finished for half a year. An accrediting authority that heard about the project at kickoff and then not again. A landlord question that was going to be easy. A trade that closed a wall before anyone looked behind it. A TEMPEST and RF question that stayed open because settling it meant a conversation nobody wanted to start. Security system scope that the builder assumed the integrator owned and the integrator assumed was in the base contract. Long-lead doors ordered after the drywall was up. A change order sitting in an approval queue while the work around it quietly stopped.
None of these is exotic and none of them require an unusual project. What they share is that each one is invisible in a status meeting until it is expensive, because each is somebody else's problem right up until it is everybody's.
Why accreditation evidence has to start during design
Most of an accreditation package describes conditions that stop being observable the moment the work is covered. Wall assemblies, backing, penetrations and cable pathways are documentable while they are open, and afterwards can only be reconstructed from memory, invoices and hope. The Fixed Facility Checklist and the Construction Security Plan are built as the work proceeds for exactly that reason.
There is a second reason, and it is the more expensive one. A design coordinated with the AO/CSA before construction is what makes the finished space match the package that describes it. A design that skips that step is a bet that the authority will agree with every interpretation made along the way, settled at the end, when the only remaining correction is demolition.
Why facility and contract schedules diverge
They run on different clocks. The contract schedule moves on award dates, funding actions, modifications and fiscal years. The facility schedule moves on long-lead material, cleared labor availability, inspection and test windows, and the calendar of the accrediting authority. Neither party controls the other's clock.
So an occupancy date gets set from the contract, the facility is built on the other schedule, and the gap widens without anybody deciding it should. The correction is not a better spreadsheet. It is putting the facility milestones that actually gate the work, the long-lead orders, the witness points, the coordination submissions, into the schedule that leadership reads.
Why is my secure facility project stalled?
Select the symptoms you are actually seeing. What comes back is the class or classes of failure that usually produce them, what normally resolves each one, who has to be in the room, and what evidence to gather before anyone sits down to review the project.
Input rule. Do not enter classified facility details. Planning-level inputs only. Your selections stay in this browser unless you choose to send them.
What Salian does, and what Salian does not control.
Salian scopes, designs, manages cleared construction, arranges and witnesses testing, writes the record, and coordinates with the AO/CSA through to the determination. On a recovery that begins with a walk of the space against the drawings and an unflattering list of what is missing.
No contractor accredits a facility. The determination, the inspection schedule, and how the standard applies to your specific space rest with the applicable Accrediting Official or Cognizant Security Authority. Salian also does not control your landlord, your funding actions, or a carrier's delivery date, though it will say plainly when one of those is the real problem.
If you send the summary, someone at Salian reads it rather than routing it. What comes back is what Salian would want to see first, usually the drawing set, the schedule, the open change orders and the record of coordination to date, and a straight view on what the recovery actually involves.
Occasionally the honest read is that the space, the lease or the funding cannot support the requirement, and the right move is a different site or a different scope. Salian says so early and in writing rather than billing through a year of the alternative.
Sources.
The standards this page describes, as published.
- Intelligence Community Directive 705, with implementing specifications ICS 705-1 and ICS 705-2. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. dni.gov, Intelligence Community Directives Retrieved 2026-09-02
- IC Technical Specifications for the Construction and Management of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, version 1.5.1 (the TSPM). ODNI, National Counterintelligence and Security Center. dni.gov, IC Technical Specifications (PDF) Retrieved 2026-09-02
Standards are revised. Confirm the current version, and what your Cognizant Security Authority applies to your facility, before relying on anything summarised here.
SCIF design and build, answered.
Who can design and build a SCIF?
What standard governs SCIF design and construction?
How long does it take to design and build a SCIF?
Do I need concept approval before construction starts?
Can Salian Defense take over a stalled SCIF build?
Why do secure facility projects stall?
Why does accreditation evidence have to start during design?
Why do the facility schedule and the contract schedule drift apart?
Start with a scope, or tell us what is stuck.
If a project is already moving sideways, run the diagnostic above and send the summary: it gives Salian enough to be useful in the first conversation. If you are earlier than that, the Scope intake is a short, unclassified set of questions on your contract, funding, workforce, and current posture that maps your path to a turnkey accredited facility. If you do not yet hold a facility clearance, the FCL readiness check tells you where you stand before you commit to a build. All three are free, and none of them require anything classified.