Dewberry: High Point Regional Health Facilities building expansion

Electrical, power; energy, sustainability; fire, life safety; HVAC, mechanical; lighting; plumbing, piping

By Dewberry August 10, 2017

Engineering firm: Dewberry

2017 MEP Giants rank: 33

Project: High Point Regional Health Facilities building expansion

Address: High Point, N.C.

Building type: Hospital/health care facility

Project type: New construction

Engineering services: Electrical, power; energy, sustainability; fire, life safety; HVAC, mechanical; lighting; plumbing, piping

Project timeline: September 2013 to September 2015

MEP/FP budget: $818,254

Challenges

One of the main obstacles faced during this project was making sure the hospital had the ability to run at full capacity on emergency power.

The project replaced all primary cooling and electrical services while maintaining normal operations. This challenge was likened to “having your spine replaced without knowing you’re having surgery.” The complex phasing plan and detailed planning of system change-overs minimized shutdowns and disruptions.

Solutions

Dewberry met these challenges with a three-tier approach:

1. Identification of existing issues, including aged equipment and insufficient capacity to support planned expansion.

2. Facility and equipment assessments and development of a plan, including increasing resilience for the hospital’s electrical systems and chiller, increasing chiller and electrical capacity to support future expansions, ability to run full hospital operations on emergency power, improving energy-efficiency, and the ability to complete the project while maintaining normal hospital operations.

3. Provide deliverables for a major renovation and expansion of the hospital’s infrastructure, including new chillers and cooling towers, new emergency generators, a consolidated electrical services system, new controls and monitoring systems, and conversion of the chilled water distribution from primary/secondary system with tertiary pumps to a variable primary system.

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