Danville, IL
Illiana VAMC
HVAC Mechanical/Electrical Upgrade
We were hired by an SDVOSB contractor to be the construction project managers for two mechanical and electrical projects funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. These projects were simultaneous and involved major planning, scheduling, and phasing throughout the project duration. Complicated infectious control risk assessment compliance, interim fire/life safety procedures, hot work permits for welding near oxygen storage facilities, and coordination with four active operating rooms had to be performed during the course of these projects. We replaced three chillers, seven air handling units, four 35 horsepower pumps, and much of the steel duct work throughout the facilities.
We also had to phase our work with work being completed on the central energy plant to keep the sterile processing department and humidifiers in the building charged with steam. We replaced the HVAC controls with a new front end based on Tridium (Niagra AX) and tied all off the existing VAVs, converted pneumatic VAVs to DDC, and replaced some VAVs with modern electronic actuators. We performed an initial TAB report and final TAB report proving the air exchanges and influent/effluent flows were as designed by the engineer of record.
One of the many challenges we had to overcome in the project was the fact that the constructability review we performed revealed a 200 GPM chilled water deficit in the original design. We found 11 fan coil units the engineer overlooked in his pre designed due diligence field investigation. We had to redesign the entire chilled water loop to be able to adequately control humidity in the four operating rooms.
The electrical portion of the project involved replacing exterior overhead distribution wires and underground distribution wires rated at 13.2 kV. We replaced all of the switch gear, uninterrupted power supply, breaker panels, and provided a detailed phasing plan with full redundancy during construction. This project allowed the hospital to be more energy efficient by exceeding ASHRAE 90.14 criteria by 34%. We completed all shop drawing submittals, structural engineering of non-structural components, schedules, RFIs, change order negotiations, and subcontractor management. The hospital is also on the national historic registration and exterior mechanical equipment had to be screened for low impact development of the project.