Rivian Normal Plant Expansion for R2, Normal, Illinois

Rivian’s Normal plant expansion added a second factory to a former Mitsubishi site in central Illinois, and it did so fast. Clayco delivered the 1.1 million-square-foot body, general assembly and end-of-line building as a design-build job, with SOM and Lamar Johnson Collaborative as architects. The first R2 validation vehicles came off the line on Jan. 15, 2026.

WGLT, the local public radio station, reported 11 months of construction, about 18 months for design and construction together, and a finish under budget.

Project Scope

Rivian announced the $1.5 billion investment in May 2024 after Illinois offered $827 million in incentives over 30 years. ENR covered the package at the time alongside the pause of the company’s Georgia plant. The Illinois deal requires at least 559 new full-time jobs by the end of 2029.

The centerpiece is the building Rivian calls Normal 2, attached to an existing plant of roughly 4 million square feet where the R1 trucks and SUVs and the commercial vans are built. Around it, Clayco’s scope covers a parts pre-treat and e-coat building, a battery pack assembly building, an automated storage and retrieval building, conveyance structures, a high-speed test track and a squeak-and-rattle track. Battery and drive unit areas inside the old plant were reconfigured. A supplier park and logistics building adds about 1.2 million square feet more, linked to the main plant by a tunnel.

The published sizes don’t agree. Rivian and WGLT give 1.1 million square feet for the main building. SOM lists 1.3 million gross. Clayco says its total exceeds 2.1 million, and WGLT counts 2.6 million with the supplier park. They’re measuring different boundaries.

SOM credits I.C. Thomasson Associates, Clevenger Associates, Stock & Associates, Tucker Jones Engineers, Shiner Acoustics and AtkinsRealis among its collaborators. About 2,000 tradespeople worked the job, WGLT reported.

Why It Matters

Speed was the product. SOM says the work was split into more than 40 smaller delivery packages and went from first concept to full operation in 24 months. Rivian said in March 2025 that prefabrication was being used to shorten the schedule. Small packages let foundations and steel start while the rest of the design catches up, which is the whole argument for design-build on a job like this.

It’s also a reuse story. Rivian extended a plant it already owned instead of waiting on its greenfield site in Georgia, where work had been paused.

Capacity rises to 215,000 vehicles a year on three shifts, 155,000 of them R2s.

The plant built 42,284 vehicles in 2025. It now has room for five times that.

Project Team & Details