The Oakland Federal Building
The Oakland Federal Building was a challenging project. The project consisted of two 17-story office towers and two 5-story annex buildings. One of the annex buildings was a federal courthouse, and the other was a U.S. post office and conference center. The building was occupied the entire time of the retrofit. HVAC Controls retrofitted the entire Building Automation System. The Central Plant equipment consisted of 5 chillers, 3 heating hot water boilers, 1 plate heat exchanger, a new refrigerant monitoring system, and 8 VFDs on various pieces of equipment. There were 4 major air handling systems, with tandem supply and return fans, on each system for the towers. There were 4 smaller AHUs in each annex building. There were 14 Fan Coil Units, 10 Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units, and 63 energy meters installed. There were also 1200+ double duct mixing boxes that needed to be retrofitted.
Given the fact that the building was occupied from 6 am to 5 pm, we elected to do most of the major retrofit work in the towers and the Courthouse at night. HVAC Controls employees worked very closely with the on-site project manager to coordinate access throughout the building. This allowed us easier entry and provided much less disruption to the tenants of the building. All of the building tenants are Federal Agencies, many with secured areas we needed to enter to accomplish our work.
Our "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" policy worked extremely well. Our success was accomplished by draping the furniture with painter's cloth, using feather dusters on furniture after being in areas where we needed access to the ceiling space, and vacuuming each area after our task was completed. We then made sure that each piece of furniture was returned to its rightful place. Sometimes, the only way a tenant knew we had been in their space was because we left it cleaner than when we arrived. The proactive involvement with a project manager and interaction with the tenants paid off in successfully completing a very challenging job.