Page 45 - Zero Net Energy Case Study Buildings-Volume 2

IBEW-NECA JATC TRAINING FACILITY
CASE STUDY NO. 8
In contrast to Case Study No. 7, the DPR Construction office building, where the client is a tenant with a 10-year lease, the client for this case study is the owner. A market-comparable budget was established for the renovation and design decisions were weighed against cost factors, including life-cycle assessment of low-energy building features and systems.
The JATC leadership hired the design team based primarily on knowledge of the client’s pro- grammatic objectives, not with regard to experience with the design of ZNE buildings. As the JATC confirmed its goal of a design integrated with ZNE systems and overall ZNE performance, the sustainability consultant was added to the team to provide ZNE design concepts and analy- sis. An intensive period of re-design followed to incorporate these concepts and to carry out both technical and financial analyses.
The resulting building was deemed to be so successful in achieving the ZNE-related goals of the project that the client has named the building The Zero Net Energy Center.
Design Process and Low Energy Design Strategies
In a process similar to that of Case Study No. 7, life cycle cost assessment was applied to deci- sions about alternative building features and systems. Also, the existing building itself presented constraints that made normal low-energy features costly to incorporate, ruling them out based on cost criteria. This case study therefore also demonstrates that ZNE performance is still reason- ably possible even in the absence of normally prescribed ZNE building characteristics.
A related commonality of the two case studies was the involvement during the design process of the general contractor. In Case Study #7 the client was the general contractor, while for this case study, the JATC hired the general contractor primarily to provide pricing for design feature alternatives. Hard bids from the different trades were then submitted to the general contractor when the design phase was completed and bid packages were issued by the design team.
The project therefore followed an integrated design process (IDP) among design disciplines as well as close involvement of the general contractor and subcontractors during the entire process. In a further advance of integration of the design and construction processes, the client involved a master system integrator beginning in the design phase specifically to coordinate the operational controls for all systems in the building from design through construction and then continuing in a maintenance role through the first years of occupancy. (See the discussion below under “Build- ing Control Systems” for more details about the role of the master system integrator.)
Planning Concept and General Design Considerations
The building program developed by the project team includes hands-on classroom spaces (labo- ratories), workshops, meeting spaces and an office suite for the IBEW-NECA training program. The entire interior of the existing building was gutted and re-planned as the new educational training center. The new spaces are generally organized with the office spaces, classrooms and laboratories at the exterior of the large, one-story floor plate, adjacent to the limited number of windows, with workshops located in the interior.
Because of the large amount of interior space and the relatively large population and equipment use in that space, the cooling load was expected to dominate over heating. As a result, the de- sign team focused on cooling strategies that capitalized on the free cooling available due to the marine climate as well as lighting load reductions through effective daylighting.
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