a lot of sense when weight is a major concern. When
you’re able to put the condensing unit on the ground
outside of the building and build a little yard around
it, there’s less structural retrofits necessary which
can save a lot on overall costs, especially on older
buildings that don’t have the structural allocations
for the kind of weights that we would be adding up
there. In this case we were able to work with the
Structural engineer to design special roof platforms
to house the equipment without triggering additional
roof reinforcements.
What were the client’s most important concerns?
SN: You have to be aware of who the decision makers
are and where their priorities lie. The driving factor
is going to depend on who you’re in the meeting
with so it’s important to get the right people to
make decisions. Overall, cost is always going to be
important. Energy efficiency is great but will usually
come in secondary to cost. It’s up to us to balance
the two.
The driving factor in a lot of the LBUSD projects has
been maintenance and serviceability and that factor
isn’t unique to Long Beach. It’s a big consideration
for LAUSD and most of the other districts in
California. School districts often have a few HVAC
personnel that service multiple campuses, so they’re
stretched pretty thin. Not many districts have plant
engineers that are dedicated to a single campus, so
the more complex systems that require this kind of
staff are just not feasible for them. Cost, efficiency,
and staff capabilities are the driving factors when
districts decide which type of system to install on
campuses and the priority these factors receive
varies by district.
What were some of the challenges you had to
overcome?
SN: The complexity of the project comes from the
age of some of the buildings. The Wilson campus
has a lot of history, the main admin building was
built in 1924. Most of the Wilson campus survived the
1933 Long Beach Earthquake and in 1934 they did a
structural retrofit, adding concrete reinforcements
throughout the campus. We had to do a lot of
coordination with the structural engineers to identify
the differences between the original construction
and the post-earthquake structural retrofit. We had
6
to design around the concrete reinforcement to
not compromise the structural integrity of campus
buildings. That was one of the most challenging
aspects of this project, working around the
structural retrofits.
There’s also always difficulties with any renovation
project of finding all the drawings documenting
changes that have been made throughout the years.
You’re never going to find everything and that can
make things a bit difficult for contractors. Wilson
isn’t in construction yet but they’re going to start
in a few months, and it should be interesting when
things finally start to get going.
Overall, cost is always going to be
important. Energy efficiency is great but
will usually come in secondary to cost. It’s
up to us to balance the two.
How did you minimize the project from impacting
students and school operations?
SN: This was another challenge. We worked with the
district and with the general contractor. The GC
is already on board and we’ve worked with them
directly to establish the phasing of the project. The
campus will remain open, they’re shifting a lot of
the students around to other areas and portable
classrooms will be a part of the solutions. We’re
breaking up construction into manageable portions,
once it’s complete, the contractor will turn it over to
the district and start constructing another portion of
the project and cycle students around the campus
as they’re building.
Are there other big K-12 projects for you in the near
future?
SN: I talked a lot about LBUSD, but we’re also heavily
involved with LAUSD. They’ve been putting out a lot
of design-build projects which we’ve been teaming
up with contractors and architects as part of
design-build teams. We also work with the districts
surrounding LBUSD & LAUSD, we’re just wrapping
up a multi-campus Prop 39 project with Rosemead