Article from our Perspective Volume 5, Quarter 4 – Our natural habitat: energy savings.
Our design-build project with SNBL, a Japanese owned contract research organization in Everett, Washington, started as a simple coil replacement 5 years ago. And it has significantly evolved – this energy efficiency project is the first participant in SnoPUD’s Energy Savings Purchasing Program and includes a $1.1 million conservation incentive from PSE.
“The program is enabling SNBL to address many of our aging infrastructure needs. We are getting this work done as a program instead of many small projects over multiple years. In fact, the lighting improvements to LED would have never been funded.” – Ron Wren, Director, Facilities Operations and Cost Reduction at SNBL USA
The project consists of habitat and office space covering 4 buildings of over 120,000 SF. The existing habitat mechanical system consists of 24/7, 100% outside air, constant volume rooftop units and paired exhaust fans. Our project replaces all 13 habitat rooftop units, and 24 exhaust fans with variable controlled fans, and air-to-air heat exchangers. These habitats will be controlled 24/7 using volatile organic compound sensors which will allow the zones to ramp down to 6 air changes per hour during off-peak animal activity periods and modulate up to 10 air changes per hour during higher activity periods. The reduced air changes and heat exchanging of all exhaust air in addition to the LED lighting improvements will result in dramatic energy savings and improved comfort.
As of the end of August, all below roof structural steel upgrades were completed. This will be followed by the setting of 13 rooftop mechanical skids which will include heat exchangers, exhaust fans, and controls. Close coordination with SNBL will result in 13 zone-by-zone rooftop unit shutdowns. SNBL has provided certain windows of habitat spaces being vacated when a shutdown will occur. The existing RTU will be picked off the roof, new curb adapter and new unit installed, and then tied into the new skid assembly, started up and checked out. Many people have been involved in getting this project to its current state and deserve credit, yet none more so than BPG account executive D’Wayne Kendrick who has developed this project over 4 years, Project Engineer Art Joseph, Sr. Project Manager Mark Krewedl, and Site Foreman Robert Wagner. This project is on track with a completion date of January 2018.
