The Heart of Your Campus Buildings: Central Utility Plants
The way that each student body is the heart of its campus, your Central Utility Plant (CUP) serves as the heart of every building on your campus, playing an integral role for all higher education structures by providing essential utilities to the hub that houses your students, faculty, administrators and staff.
McCownGordon knows all too well the importance of a happy, energetic and well taken care of campus. We take it personally when it comes to the well-being of all lives impacted by a Central Utility Plant, even if they never think twice (or once) about it, because a well working CUP is one that goes unnoticed.
Building Performance Solutions so You Don’t Have to
During the process of implementing a Central Utility Plant, we make it a point to maximize our value that benefits our client best. This involves utilizing our in-house Building Performance Solutions team to make a project as transparent and seamless as possible, pinpointing areas of potential concern before they arise. While many people can be experts on Central Utility Plants, the McCownGordon Building Performance Solutions team takes is one step further. Due to their diverse backgrounds in design, construction and facilities, this team provides one of kind insight into any project they’re a part of.
Before our trade partners step foot on a construction site, our Building Performance Solutions team is already thinking of the best possible ways to integrate seamless coordination across all systems. Whether we are evaluating value options regarding new or upgraded chiller equipment, reviewing the technical installation requirements for a steam system, or providing a retro commissioning investigation into optimizing and existing CUP, we are viewing every project through a 360-degree lens.
In addition to providing our clients the best CUP to fit their needs and budget, our Building Performance Solutions team also utilizes Virtual Design and Construction (VDC). For new plants, we can build out a digital twin/virtual mockup to address all clashes, maintenance requirements, valve placements, etc. are addressed prior to construction. For existing facilities, our laser scanning technology can provide a point cloud model of existing conditions (equipment, piping, structure) within a 5mm accuracy so that our design and trade partners have exact existing conditions to save time and money designing and installing components that fit in the space. Pushing BIM farther, we can also provide 6D BIM to include facility operations and management information inside the model.
Central Utility Plant and a Hands-On Learning Opportunity
At the University of Kansas, the McCownGordon team tackled a brand-new Central Utility Plant project that ended with 1,900 cooling tons (chillers), 28,000 heating MBH (boilers), and at the end of the day, doubled as a teaching environment. At the time, the campus was undergoing a major lift, including a 285,000 square foot integrated science facility, a 26,500 square foot student union, 1,200 beds of student housing in three building and approximately 2,000 parking spaces. Because of this, the Central Utility Plant was made priority number one for the client as it was set to support six new campus buildings, along with future development.
Our team worked hand in hand with the other contractors on the project site to ensure that the heart of the campus was preserved so that it received the least amount of impact for daily activities to resume. This also required safety to be a top priority, ensuring that any students, staff or personnel could resume their regular routines with little to no disruption from the McCownGordon team.
This 19,600 square foot project encapsulated the true versatility of a Central Utility Plant and highlighted how the McCownGordon team was able to pair operations and learning into one centralized location. This project included a mezzanine classroom that overlooked the plant, along with a west wall that had a large glass opening to allow onlookers the ability to get an up-close look into this dynamic plant. Central Utility Plants are typically tucked away and are only brought to light when something goes wrong, but for this higher education build, students, staff, administrators and visitors had the opportunity to see, in real-time, what keeps them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Occupied Campuses Pose No Threat
There are multiple use cases where a Central Utility Plant is already integrated into a campus. During these certain situations, it’s often best practice to engage our team early in the design phase so we can be as hands-on as possible while we become familiar with the pre-existing Central Utility Plant.
The McCownGordon team tackled a Central Utility Plant for a Higher Education build that had a Central Utility Plant already on campus. Because of this, we developed a highly detailed Building Information Model (BIM) to gain better insight into the project before any physical work began. This specific model provided clash detection early on that resulted in streamlining the complicated distribution line installation process. At the end of this project, our team successfully executed a Central Utility Plant that housed two, 2,950-pound chillers, two cooling towers, heat exchangers and associated pumps and PLC controls and was tied into their existing chilled water loop that required sequencing and integration with their existing campus CUP.
This project was also phased to minimize disruption to an active campus, connecting 39 buildings in 41 phases. Our team came together to brainstorm an effective and uniformed way we would be able to alert the student body and pedestrians of the work taking place on campus in a timely manner. In the end, a customized X (formerly Twitter) page was built, set up and managed by the McCownGordon team throughout the duration of the project, helping to inform students and staff of road and sidewalk closures, detour routes, safety concerns and expected and achieved milestones. The posts were generated by the McCownGordon Superintendent on the project site, with support from the marketing team, and made accessible from the McCownGordon website, searchable through X and promoted throughout campus for student and staff visibility. Secondary, proactive wayfinding signage was placed around the campus to increase communication and minimize the effects of construction on campus.
The key to the success at the end of this projected was attributed to communication and coordination among stakeholders all being engaged early in the process, laying the foundation and roadmap for us to execute accordingly and on-time. Because of our ability to work with clients collaboratively, quickly and efficiently, we were able to return $1.58M of the college’s budget back to them for future investment.
Central Utility Plants may not the be the deciding factor on why students choose to go to a specific school, or why administrators want to work at one place opposed to another, but they are the heart of your campus buildings. That’s why finding a construction company that comes in with the best value engineered solutions, intended to make your systems more efficient, is crucial. Our approach, set in thinking like both an owner and a campus facility director, sets us apart. From the beginning of the design process, we focus on how the systems will be operated, ensuring they are tailored to function specifically for our clients’ needs. This commitment to understanding and anticipating their requirements ensures long-term success and seamless operation. Our team’s promise is a true partnership, and everything we do will not only have your best interest in mind but have the heart of the campus in mind, your students.
