Navistar International Corporate Headquarters

Navistar International Corporate Headquarters; Environmental Systems Design Inc. (ESD)

Source: Environmental Systems Design Inc. (ESD)

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Project name: Navistar International Corporate Headquarters

Location: Lisle, Ill.

Firm name: Environmental Systems Design Inc. (ESD)

Project type, building type: Other, office

Project duration: 1 year

Project completion date: Oct. 3, 2011

Project budget for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection engineering only: $42.8 million

Engineering challenges

Navistar International needed to consolidate its North American headquarters and engineering centers from multiple office locations to one campus. Located in Lisle, Ill., the former Alcatel-Lucent campus consisted of approximately 1,200,000 sq ft in nine existing buildings. Environmental Systems Design Inc. (ESD) provided the consulting engineering design and construction field observation services necessary to successfully execute the consolidation. The project involved a mixture of existing buildings that required renovation, along with the new construction of a design center and vehicle review center. The nine existing buildings consisted of five that were constructed a little over 20 years ago and the remaining built approximately 10 years later. The mixture of these buildings made centralizing the campus’s operation systems a challenge. In addition to the scale and complexity of the project, ESD was faced with an aggressive 11-month schedule. Another challenge involved the signature building on campus. It includes a curved glass design feature on the fifth floor with extreme solar gain attributes. When the building was used by Alcatel-Lucent, the employees on the fifth floor used to have to wear shorts year-round. Navistar wanted to make certain its employees would have a consistent level of comfort on the fifth floor throughout the year.

Solutions

ESD’s solution to the aggressive schedule and complexity of the Navistar project was the utilization of multiple project teams. In order to provide the same level of consistency one project team would offer, ESD utilized an internal quality assurance team during the redevelopment and design. Along with internal coordination among the team managers, ESD frequently met with end-user groups and the owner’s representative in order to assure the construction of the appropriate specialty spaces. ESD engineered a control system upgrade and central building automation to tie all the construction together. To coordinate replacement of equipment, such as air handling units in small spaces, ESD utilized the 3-D modeling software, Revit. Regarding the signature building’s notorious fifth floor, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and solar modeling were used to test shading and HVAC options to reduce solar gain and provide a comfortable, productive work environment. The solution developed by ESD has mitigated the solar gain heat issue so well that last summer, after anticipating greater solar gain, the building’s engineer received the first cold call from a fifth-floor occupant.