Project Profile: San Mateo – Cordilleras Mental Health Center
To build the new facility on an existing site located within a large valley in the coastal foothills of Northern California and adjacent to the existing behavioral health facility.
Engineering firm: CannonDesign
2024 MEP Giants rank: 40
Project: San Mateo – Cordilleras Mental Health Center
Location: Redwood City, CA, United States
Building type: Hospital/health care facility
Project type: New construction
Engineering services: Automation, controls; electrical, power; energy, sustainability; fire, life safety; HVAC, mechanical; lighting; plumbing, piping
Project timeline: September 2016 to March 2025
MEP/FP engineering budget: $29,000,000
The buildings on campus are arranged around a central open space with sheltered outdoor seating, community gardens and recreation areas. Courtesy: CannonDesign
The campus consists of four single-story mental health recovery centers, each accommodating 16 people needing more tailored care and a separate housing unit for 57 individuals needing less acute care. Courtesy: CannonDesign
Challenges
The San Mateo Cordilleras Behavioral Health campus was a challenging project for many reasons that begin with the decision the county made to build the new facility on an existing site located within a large valley in the coastal foothills of Northern California and adjacent to the existing behavioral health facility. This challenge of building within the existing valley with site elevation differences created many challenges for the design. Also building next to the existing facility required a phasing strategy to be developed which allowed the use of the existing facility while construction of the new campus was completed with no disruption to the existing facilities utilities. Also, an additional challenge was ensuring that adequate renewable energy systems could be designed within the project to achieve the requirement of a net zero facility and an all-electric campus installed within this valley.
Much care was taken to protect and preserve the surrounding natural environment and features biophilic design to support therapeutic healing. Courtesy: CannonDesign
Solutions
As mentioned above the project is being constructed within a valley and this posed challenges to the design team. Delivering water to the site had access to a municipal water supply, but due to the proximity of the site to the supply and the associated elevation changes, a pumping and storage system was required to supply reliable water volume and pressure to the campus for both domestic and fire water services. An old pump station was upgraded to pumped water up over 200 vertical feet to storage tanks totaling approximately 500,000 gal. The tanks then provided water volume down to the campus water and fire water systems where additional building pumps were added to boost pressure around the campus as needed.
Solar panels on the buildings’ roofs and the parking areas work to offset the energy usage onsite. Courtesy: CannonDesign
Also, because of the shading associated with the campus being built within the valley and associated elevation changes a lot of attention had to be paid coordination the placement of PV to overcome the challenging of valley shadowing. The buildings were designed as all electric with energy recovery VRF systems to minimize the energy use of the facility, but we also completed early massing studies to minimize how much PV was required to meet the net zero requirements for the project.
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