Category 2
Building / Technology / Structural Systems
OUTSTANDING PROJECT
University of Maryland BioPark, Building 2
Firm: KIBART
Kibart, Inc. provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design engineering services for Building 2 of the University of Maryland Baltimore Bio-Park located in Baltimore’s Westside redevelopment district. This 240,000 SF, six floor high rise bio-tech R&D facility was designed for a LEED Silver Rating that exceeds ASHRAE 90.1-1999 energy goals by 41.9%. The mechanical/electrical systems designed by Project Managers Farshad Kassiri, P.E. and Karl M. Gumnick, P.E. posed several unique challenges that required creative design solutions. The first challenge was for Kibart to design the mechanical/electrical systems to meet the LEED Silver rating and achieve a 35% energy reduction against the ASHRAE Energy Model. Both goals were needed to comply with construction tax credits offered by the Maryland Energy Administration. This challenge was especially difficult for this project, due to the nature of this facility. R&D lab buildings traditionally use large amounts of energy, due to items such as year-round continuous heating/cooling, fume hoods, extensive lab exhaust systems, and high quantities of fresh air for lab make-up. Kibart exceeded its objectives by achieving a 41.9% energy reduction, employing variable volume lab airflow, including hoods, variable/primary chiller plant, variable/primary high efficient condensing gas heating system, large Delta T heating and chilled water flow, fluorescent T5 lighting fixtures, high efficient wall envelope system, Low E argon filled window glazing, and VAV fresh air controls while maintaining high levels of indoor air quality. The second challenge was to design for flexibility to accommodate a multitude of varying unknown tenants, including labs, offices, and classrooms. The firm met that challenge by implementing M/E/P systems that were sized for an initial non-lab occupancy that could easily be doubled in capacity to serve labs. This effort required careful planning and coordination with all of the team members, including the Architect, the Owner, and the General Contractor.
HONOR AWARD
Telemetry/Alarm Control Instrumentation for Water Distribution System
Firm: Sidhu Associates
A comprehensive and fully-featured Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
system was designed and built for the City of Baltimore. A new state-of-the-art, centralized Telemetry Control Center (TCC) was provided within this project at the existing Ashburton Water Filtration Plant building owned and operated by the City. This project included design of new instrumentation at fifty remote sites, specification of pump controls to facilitate remote control, design of automatic control algorithms to operate the unmanned pumping stations and implementation of microprocessor-based programmable logic controllers (PLC) and redundant communication equipment at all of the sites. Prior to this project, facilities were monitored and controlled in a number of disparate ways, including manual dispatch to remote locations. All facilities are now monitored and controlled from the TCC. Utilizing licensed radio communication for data communication was a new concept introduced to the City of Baltimore under this project. As designed, the system can be easily expanded in the future to provide more facilities with reliable wireless communication. Modular and redundant components were utilized at TCC to minimize impact to the system in the event of a single component failure. This redundancy guarantees operators reliable, accurate information allowing them to react quickly to water needs throughout the region and immediately respond to unexpected events and thus protect the safety of the public water system. Unmanned stations are controlled remotely, creating an economic savings over dispatching individuals to stations when pumps need to be started or stopped. Chlorine leak annunciation at TCC allows operators to respond immediately, repair the leak and notify the public. The entire system was engineered to be installed and commissioned on a site-by-site basis to allow all facilities to operate continuously--serving the public and providing necessary water for fire protection at all times. The project design allowed for coordination among other concurrent renovation projects without impact to project schedule. The public benefited from a modernized water distribution system without being inconvenienced by outages. Sidhu Associates personnel developed and implemented a unique interface between the new SCADA system and a proprietary City-owned data historian. With the implementation of an SQL data interface with firewall, all of the SCADA data are transmitted automatically to the data historian. All users now have continuous access to real-time data, critical to optimizing system operation.
