Furthermore, the pumping system in the new plant utilized a primary-distributed secondary system in lieu of the direct pumped "primary only" system used in the older plant. The benefit of the primary-distributed secondary system was that future buildings would have their own local dedicated chilled water pumps that could be connected to the new west campus system in what could be described as a "plug and play" arrangement; a complete system rebalancing would not be necessary as each new building came online.
The two campus plants are currently operating independently. However, the CDC master planners have envisioned all along that the two plants will one day work together. (This was considered in the determination of capacity for the west campus plant.) Although the new approach used in the West Campus CUP had several advantages over the older plant, there was such a disparity in the designs that a five-step approach was developed to ultimately interconnect the two plants.