Probably a year before 9/11, I was asked my thoughts along the lines of, “What else should we commission beyond the standard building systems?” My client was the project engineer at the Department of Defense in the Pentagon. I suggested “commission project record drawings.” I guess you could say I made up the task of commissioning record drawings, but I got my point across.
Hospitals in the U.S., already facing daunting challenges from evolving health care reimbursement models, now have another item on their to-do list: prepare for increased health care demands and weather disasters caused by climate change.
A few months ago, this column covered the basics of developing effective control system sequences. You might recall that it discussed the process of how a designer needs to select and describe sequences that provided safe, reliable, and efficient control.
Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a collaborative process that has been applied more and more frequently to building design and construction projects. Although it is implemented in slightly different ways from project to project, it is always about involving all project team members in intense planning and coordination, starting very early in design and extending through construction and facility turnover.
Spot exhaust is a unique design engineering challenge. The 2015 ASHRAE Handbook – HVAC Applicationscovers a broad spectrum of applications in just about all the comfort applications (chapters 1 through 13) and industrial applications (chapters 14 through 33) with personal safety an integral part of chapter 32. But spot return air doesn’t get much press in ASHRAE.
In our daily lives, we humans move through a sea of microbial life that is seldom perceived except in the context of potential disease and decay (L. Feazel 2009).
There is a fair amount of press about the concept of the “Internet of Things” — or as it is commonly abbreviated, IOT. The concept of IOT is simply defined as a network of physical devices.
Continuing last month’s topic of commissioning action lists (a.k.a. master issues logs, a.k.a. corrective action lists), I would like to focus on the items in those documents that deal with construction phase or acceptance testing “deficiencies.”
Leaning on experience and data from various K-12 cities and projects, the authors pursue some less conventional design approaches. They may revolve around radiant heating and/or cooling, but depending on school size and other factors, the smart use of heat recovery, DOAS, and improved central plants could also put a project on the HVAC honor roll.
Budgets, codes, and technologies are constantly shifting and evolving. These days, even the classrooms are often portable. Staying one step ahead will depend on your knowledge of current design options and how to integrate them into the space.