Department of Veterans Affairs Satellite Community-Based Outpatient Clinic

Project Profile: Department of Veterans Affairs Satellite Community-Based Outpatient Clinic



Firm name: PageSoutherlandPage

Project building name and location: Department of Veterans Affairs Satellite Community-Based Outpatient Clinic, Austin, Texas

Type of building and type of project: Outpatient Clinic, New Construction

Project completion date and project duration: 2013

Engineering challenges and solutions:

One of the main challenges our firm solved was to provide a high efficiency  (beating ASHRAE 90.1 by 30% energy usage) healthcare facility within the constraints of a developer-led competitively bid design-build project delivery. 

Solutions to the Above Challenges

Our firm proactively solved this through a collaborative team approach starting at the onset of the concept stage through Construction Documents. We took a holistic design approach to this challenge by making all design decisions and system selections contribute to the overall goal. Building envelope and lighting system designs were optimized to reduce the load to the greatest extent, while energy recover outside air units, high efficiency equipment and utilized energy recovery chiller technology to minimize the energy required to satisfy the load.

System selection included capturing waste (free) energy where possible such as harvesting waste heat from the condenser side of the energy recover chiller to provide building heating water while also providing chilled water for the cooling side. The energy recover chillers were piped in series on both the heat and cooling sides to allow improved reliability with N+1 redundancy. Through this holistic and collaborative approach our team exceeded the project’s energy efficiency goals while providing the owner with a LEED Silver design.


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