Building 81 Electrical Upgrades, VA Puget Sound Health Care System - American Lake Campus, Tacoma, WA
Wood Harbinger provided engineering design and construction administration to replace and upgrade the primary, secondary, and emergency power distribution system for Building 81. The 86,000 SF historic facility serves as the Ambulatory Care Building, and did not have the required separation of the emergency distribution system. By code, healthcare facilities are required to have separate circuits and functions for the life safety, critical, and equipment distribution systems.
Wood Harbinger provided a study of the existing primary, secondary, and emergency power distribution systems serving Building 81. Based on the results, we designed a new electrical distribution system with the new separation of services: normal, critical, life safety, and equipment systems. Wood Harbinger also upgraded the primary distribution system and riser panel system to integrate the updated emergency power system with the existing system.
The mechanical systems include ventilation of the electrical room as well as plumbing for the relocated restroom. Wood Harbinger’s mechanical team chose to use ventilation discharge vents in order to comply with the exterior building designation.
The challenge of this project was providing a complete electrical distribution infrastructure to a fully operational and occupied healthcare facility. Wood Harbinger aided the owner in identifying spaces that allowed the construction of the electrical infrastructure to occur, while leaving the existing infrastructure in place and operational. We provided a detailed sequence of construction to mitigate outages during cutover from the existing to new system.
Additional challenges during design relate to the historic structure. Challenges included plumbing risers that were not stacked properly, structural elements that did not align from floor to floor, and building elements of the original design that were buried or covered by later remodels and upgrades.