Consulting-Specifying Engineer - March 2009 - (Page 16) M/E/P Roundtable a data center to continue to operate when a gaseous system is discharged. CSE : If you could get owners or engineers to do one thing differently to prevent errors, waste, or higher cost, what would you recommend? greatly benefit from more upfront coordination with the end-user and facilities personnel. However, the tendency to compress the project schedule may be more of a cultural issue. Today, engineering and construction are examined with a modular “LEGO block” mentality, which is the idea that In complicated MEP systems, 3-D modeling and BIM will allow the engineers to determine collisions, routing, and sizing issues long before the problems are found in the field. —Keith Lane Lane: Work together as a team to provide a good basis of design (BOD) document at the very beginning of the project. The BOD spells out the design intent, the system requirements, and the interaction between the MEP systems. Getting this hammered out in the beginning will save significant time and money during the design, development, and construction document phase of the project. Berry: Be very clear in understanding what your operational requirements are and communicate this clearly to the team. Ryan: I would recommend fully understanding your data center requirements and availability needs. Make it as modular as possible to allow the data center to easily grow and change over time. Right size the infrastructure for your initial needs and provide avenues for simple “plug-and-play” capacity growth over time. Many data center projects are needlessly built to the extremes. Typically, only a small portion of the data center equipment is critical, not the entire data center. However, people still build data centers as if they are a homogenous critical environment. Babigian: Give us a little more time! Many projects today must be on the fast track, with demands for prepurchase specifications and the procurement of systems and equipment before the design is even complete. We would all parts are interchangeable. If this was true, all parts of a system would be inherently inefficient as their design would require the balancing of many different performance requirements. This has been worsened by the constant technological changes that we deal with daily. The upfront coordination would increase the opportunity for the design team, facilities personnel, and end users to determine where flexibility and interchangeability are required in the system. Less compressed project schedules would allow more opportunity to review alternative designs, perform better cost analysis, and accommodate changes in requirements or field conditions. This would allow for more decisions to be based on what is most beneficial for the user in the long term, rather than on short-term schedule impact. CSE: What engineering tools and resources do you find most useful for design (computational fluid dynamics, BIM, ASHRAE guidelines, Green Grid papers, etc.)? Babigian: ASHRAE is a good starting point, and CFD is very useful for finetuning a design and optimizing the layout. BIM is useful in building design, and a great tool for visualization and identifying conflicts. Berry: Commercially available CFD software written specifically for data centers is particularly useful when analyzing white space issues. However, commercial software is not available for many important engineering issues related to data centers—issues such as the transient thermal response of computer rooms when cooling is interrupted, and the transient effect this has on chilled water systems when some elements are backed by UPS and others are not. We have found it necessary to develop, test, and verify bespoke in-house software in order to model it and design better systems. Ryan: That is a tough one because right now the data center is evolving very quickly. ASHRAE is always a good resource when it comes to the chilled water plans. ASHRAE TC9.9 and the data center series ASHRAE is creating are also very good. Green Grid is doing great work around data center systems, efficiency, and metrics. As for tools, we have also started to lean heavily on BIM during our design process as it helps tremendously in the trade-coordination phase of the project. Interestingly enough, CFD is becoming less of a requirement as the aisles become completely contained and the air flows become predictable. Lane: We have used 3-D and BIM extensively on our mission critical projects. In complicated MEP systems, 3-D modeling and BIM will allow the engineers to determine collisions, routing, and sizing issues long before the problems are found in the field. There is no doubt that there is significant value in providing 3D and BIM on complex mission critical projects. With 3-D/BIM, there will be fewer problems during construction, less requests for information, and a reduced number of change orders resulting in a total lower cost to the owner. CSE : What technology trends for standby power and power conditioning systems are proving to be practical, affordable, and reliable in the field? 16 Consulting-Specifying Engineer • MARCH 2009
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