<i>PME</i> Excellence In Design Award Winners - Archives

Home
Online
- Industry News
- Only on PMEngineer.com
- Webinars
- White Papers
- Video Spotlight
- Ask the Experts
Current Issue
Events
- Calendar
- BNP Events
Resources
Advertise
Contact
- BNP Media

Archives

PME Excellence In Design Award Winners

by Suzette Rubio

November 1, 2005

ARTICLE TOOLS
Share
Reprints
Print
Email

PM Engineer is proud to announce that one winner and an honorable mention have been chosen to receive PME Excellence in Design Awards for 2005. Congratulations to Omicron Architecture Engineering Construction, LLC, of Vancouver, BC, Canada for its Fred Kaiser Building project, and to Practical Applications, Inc., of Boston, MA, for its BSL-3 Steam Kill System. These designs were judged by our distinguished panel of editors, engineers and consultants, based on the following criteria: innovation in design, customer satisfaction, ability to meet schedules, cost-efficient strategies, and community improvement. Nominated designs could be submitted by consulting, specifying or design engineering firms.

Exterior view of the main entrance of the Fred Kaiser Building on the Main Mall at the University of British Columbia.

Omicron’s design of The Fred Kaiser Building heating and cooling system is a truly unique project worthy of this year’s Award. While radiant heating is not new in North America, radiant cooling is. In addition to the combination of radiant cooling and radiant heating, the design incorporates a means for providing ventilation to maintain the indoor air quality. This has always been a concern with radiant cooling systems. The system also provided LEED credit points for energy conservation.

PM Engineer was impressed with the overall concept applied in the design of this heating and cooling system, as well as the water conservation in the plumbing design. The heating and cooling design embodies what the engineering profession can accomplish in meeting the comfort conditions of the building occupants while conserving energy. The design identifies some of the superior qualities of a hydronic system over other system designs.

Omicron Architecture Engineering Construction, Fred Kaiser Building (Vancouver, BC, Canada)

The contractor’s crew installing the PEX tubing on top of the bottom layer of reinforcing bars. Paul Price of Daryl-Evans Mechanical led the mechanical contractors’ team throughout the project.

Omicron is an integrated architectural, interior design, engineering and construction firm that provides total building solutions. A privately-owned design and construction company, it was launched in 1998 and is organized by market segments, including commercial, institutional, retail and renewal sectors.

Omicron completed The Fred Kaiser Building at the University of British Columbia this past spring, which houses the offices of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Applied Science. It will house almost 700 occupants consisting of faculty, researchers, administrators and students. The building provides for flexible lab space, offices, meeting rooms and a large seminar facility. Given a very limited site, the project of 96,000 sq. ft. was built over an existing building while it remained in operation. The project was designed to exceed the University of British Columbia’s Sustainability Guidelines, while maintaining a strict project cost budget limitation, using a fast-track construction management process to meet the schedule of a spring 2005 completion.

The design team included: Omicron Mechanical Engineers Geoff McDonell, P.Eng., LEED AP, and Rod Yeoh, P.Eng., LEED AP; Structural Engineer: Andrew Metten, P.Eng. of Bush Bohlman Partners; and Electrical Engineers Thys Fourie, P.Eng and Dean Kaardal, P.Eng, of Stantec Consulting. Architecture of the building is jointly credited to Omicron and Architects Alliance—Michael McColl, MAIBC and Adrian DiCastri, OAA.

HVAC Systems

View of administrative office from the atrium bridge.

The structure not only holds up the building and gives it form, but it also heats and cools the interior spaces of the building. Approximately 65,000 feet of 3/4-in. diameter PEX tubing cast into the slab allows warm and cool water to be circulated through the entire structural floor slab system to create large radiant ceiling “panels” in each room for local temperature control. A high performance exterior wall system is a requirement to allow this system to operate efficiently, requiring an integrated design process between architects, mechanical engineers and the electrical (lighting) engineer.

The heating source for the building is a steam main connection from the UBC central steam distribution system, converted to low pressure and run through a shell and tube heat exchanger to create high temperature hot water. High temperature (200°F) heating water is distributed to entry heaters, ceiling radiant panels at high glass areas next to the main entry atrium, and to four-pipe fan-coils serving the fifth floor penthouse offices, using a 40°F temperature drop to minimize flows and provide for minimum pump power requirements. This system also serves a series of bare fin-tube elements suspended just inside the main fresh air intake louvers and dampers located along the east and west interstice zone to pre-heat outdoor air entering the interstice plenum zone in wintertime. These are thermostatically controlled to maintain 65°F in the interstice plenum. Heating water is also piped through a shell and tube heat exchanger that the slab water circuit also flows through, in order to add heat to the slab water system. The maximum slab heating water temperature is nominally set to 78°F in peak winter conditions. The amount of heat generated by the internal heat gains of people and equipment, kept inside the building by the low-emissivity coated high performance windows allows the net added heating energy to be minimized.

Cooling for the building slab system is primarily produced by an evaporative closed circuit cooling tower that runs at nighttime to generate the 62°F cooling water required in the summertime cooling season. The slab thermal mass allows a time lag as the slab warms up beyond the setpoint, allowing the cooling load absorbed by the system to be removed at night using cooler night air. A small air-cooled chiller on the roof is also used for process cooling loads in the building—server rooms, electronic equipment, and other research equipment that requires dedicated low temperature chilled water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The new building being built over the existing CEME Testing Lab and Machine Shop allowed the design team to use the “interstice space” formed by the trusswork upon which the new building was supported, to be used as a main fresh air intake plenum. This interstice space was used to relocate and offset the myriad of existing roof-mounted equipment from the existing CEME building to new locations. The exposed, uninsulated building exhaust ductwork serving warm air extraction systems from below also helps temper the winter fresh air temperatures drawn into the interstice space for distribution up through vertical duct shafts to the new labs above.

The main mechanical room at the Fred Kaiser Building.

Each classroom is equipped with carbon dioxide sensors to operate individual two-speed classroom extract fans to create a “demand ventilation” system in order to minimize outdoor air energy requirements, ensuring adequate ventilation that exceeds minimum standards. Tempered fresh air is drawn up from the interstice space and distributed through interior rooms and labs by vertical ducts terminating at low level air outlets to create a displacement ventilation pattern in the rooms. Displacement ventilation consists of providing a low-level pool of air, which is drawn to warm objects/people in the room, and the buoyant warm air plumes then rise and are extracted at high levels from the rooms. The warm air from each room is vented out through the circulation corridors and up through the atriums in the building. There are two atriums in the building equipped with motorized opening windows to allow natural stack-effect air relief, and if the weather station on the roof senses extreme wind or rain conditions, then roof-mounted extract fans power the warm air out of the atriums to provide positive ventilation of the building. All perimeter rooms and offices are equipped with manually opening windows for local occupant control of ventilation and temperature. Photovoltaic panels are integrated into the main atrium skylights to act as solar shading, as well as to provide supplemental building power.

The combination of radiant temperature control in the rooms with tempered low level ventilation air, addresses certain comfort parameters: mean radiant comfort, ventilation air, and air movement. The opening windows, plus manual light switches at all of the perimeter rooms allow a great deal of local personal control for the building occupants. The building was designed to take advantage of the local climate at its location, with cool on-shore winds during the day, and outflow winds at night. The long north-south axis of the Fred Kaiser Building allows the east and west air inlets to the interstice space provide natural air movement through the building at all times.

Plumbing/Piping Systems

A conceptual view of how the new building mass was positioned over the top of an existing structure.

Potable water efficiency for the building was designed to be more than 50% above a conventional building, by installing “dual flush” toilets, waterless urinals, and infra-red operated low-flow vanities. Point-of-use electric domestic hot water heaters ensure that hot water is provided at each washroom group, minimizing standby energy losses, and reducing the amount of insulated copper water piping used for the plumbing systems. The building is fully equipped with a wet-pipe sprinkler system, along with three standpipes with fire hose valves located at each floor for the Fire Department to use in a fire situation. Atrium smoke control is provided by roof-mounted extract fans that are designed to operate at two speed settings — low speed for general ventilation purposes, and at high speed for smoke exhaust from the atriums.

Customer Satisfaction, Meeting Schedules, Reducing Cost

A design diagram of the building slab and ventilation system in summer cooling mode.

The radiant slab system met the LEED requirements for energy, indoor comfort quality and cost control that the client had set for the project. While high-performance envelope components were required with this system, the cost was offset by savings in the mechanical and electrical systems resulting in no net extra project costs. Extensive computer modeling was undertaken to simulate the system to ensure that indoor comfort requirements could be met at all times. The project was completed on time and on budget, in spite of extreme budget pressures resulting from the general construction materials and trades cost inflation that occurred over the last year in the area.

The project was a “fast tracked” construction management delivery approach, and due to the integrated mechanical and structural system, additional coordination was required during the structural slab installations. Working with the contractors, approximately 12.5 miles of PEX tubing was installed in the slabs without affecting the construction schedule, and no leaks or pipe damage occurred.

An overall building costing approach was used to make sure that the higher envelope (glass) costs would be paid for by savings in the mechanical and electrical systems. A mechanical contractor site supervisor also had a great deal of experience installing radiant floor heating projects, so the installation went very smoothly with minimal educational issues needed for all of the trades.

How Does the Project Improve the Community?

This project will use 35% less energy overall compared to a conventional “all-air” HVAC system, so reduced fossil fuel use will result, along with less air pollution. The building is at the University of British Columbia, so it can become a large-scale teaching aid to engineering students who occupy the building. A rooftop weather station plus a full suite of metering and measurement systems are also incorporated into the building automation system with a graphic display at the main public entrance of the building to provide real-time energy consumption and outdoor/indoor climate conditions for the building occupants and general public. The controls system is also set up to have Internet web-based access so that anyone can connect to the building automation system for monitoring purposes. The new building was also built over an existing one-story building to preserve local green space at that location.

For more information on Omicron Architecture Engineering Construction, visit www.omicronaec.com.

Honorable Mention

Practical Applications, Inc.’s (PAI) design of the biological wastewater steam kill system for the University of Pittsburgh BSL-3 Laboratory receives an honorable mention in this year’s Design in Excellence Award. The design of the treatment system addresses the on-site concerns for pretreatment of bio-hazard waste. The design uses a common means of killing the biological waste, steam. The plumbing codes limit the discharge temperature of all waste. The system design addresses this concern with a heat exchanger.

This design by PAI is being used in the design of other BSL-3 laboratories across the country. PM Engineer applauds Practical Applications, Inc. for the dedication to environmentally sound pretreatment of biological wastewater.

Practical Applications, Inc., BSL-3 Steam Kill System for the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh
(Boston, MA)

Boston-based Practical Applications specializes in the design, installation, and maintenance of industrial process water and wastewater systems. The company has won the bid to design and construct the BSL-3 Steam Kill System for the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh facility is one of nine biocontainment laboratories under construction across the country to study diseases and viruses that theoretically could be used as weapons by terrorists. The system will be used to kill biological pathogens found in laboratory wastewater generated by the university as it studies emerging infectious diseases.

The project is led by Joshua Jondro, Project Engineer/Chemical Engineer. PAI will complete the system’s design and electrical equipment fabrication at its new facility located in the EDIC Marine Industrial Park, Boston. All tank fabrication and testing will be completed at PAI’s South Boston Fabrication Facility. It will then be taken apart and shipped to Pittsburgh, where it will be re-assembled and fit within the dimensions of a room still being constructed.

The system collects all wastewater generated by the BSL-3 laboratories in a special sealed 6,500-gallon tank. As demand requires, the wastewater is transferred to one of three 1,500-gallon “Steam Kill” tanks. In the Steam Kill tank, live steam is injected and mixed with the wastewater at temperatures above 250°F and at a maximum pressure of 30psi. Once the biological material has been destroyed, the wastewater is cooled via a plate and frame heat exchanger, and discharged. All critical systems are automated and monitored via a state of the art SCADA system.

PAI applied a unique mixing design to the treatment process to improve heat transfer, which drastically decreased cycle times and vessel volume. It allows the system to homogeneously heat the entire contents of the tank without any solids settling. This eliminates tank stratification and guarantees that the effluent is 100% treated. This proprietary mixing design decreased equipment costs, mainly by improving through-put and increasing performance. The increased through-put allowed for a significant decrease in equipment sizes, while the proprietary mixing design improved heat transfer rates on solids suspended in the wastewater.

Piping Systems

This project has unique plumbing and piping systems, including medium pressure steam, welded stainless steel piping, welded polypropylene piping, special coatings, pressure vessels, and automatic valves. The way the pipes are connected is a very important part of such a system. If there are threaded pipe sections, there would be a risk of contaminated water leaking out. This design consists of schedule 10 welded stainless steel pipe, with pipe connections either welded or flanged, eliminating the need for any threaded sections.

In addition, there are only a handful of similar treatment systems existing in the United States. The ultimate challenge was to design a system that is reliable, safe, and easy to operate while maintaining a finite barrier to the bio-hazard.

Meeting Schedules and Reducing Cost

PAI minimized schedule delays by ordering in advance major control components (i.e., control valves, control panel equipment) and pre-testing the equipment prior to installation on the system skid.

Costs were minimized by selecting vendors whose core business was in-line with the required item.

How Does the Project Improve the Community?

The treatment system allows scientists to safely research hazardous biological agents without impacting the community. The research laboratory also provides a local facility for the community to promptly mitigate public health episodes.

Overall, PAI’s improved research will allow the United States to prevent disease, guard against bio-terrorist attacks, and maintain the worldwide lead in biological research.

For more information on Practical Applications, visit www.pai-online.com.

Suzette Rubio
RubioS@bnpmedia.com
Suzette Rubio is the Plumbing Group Online Editor for BNP Media. She can be reached at 630/962-0086 or RubioS@bnpmedia.com