Life Safety Upgrades at Illinois State University, Turner and Stevenson Halls
Normal, IL
This rehabilitation project corrected life safety deficiencies, with a primary focus on complete replacement of deficient fire alarm and detection systems, installation of new sprinkler systems, correction of accessibility deficiencies, and asbestos at Illinois State University.
The project was initiated with a complete analysis of building MEP systems to assess the need and feasibility of complete or partial upgrade of these systems against available budget and programmed project scope. Working with the University, a detailed project scope was developed that addressed all life safety issues, all major MEP system deficiencies, and many additional improvements and upgrades requested by the University.
The final project scope included:
- replacement of 10 air handlers
- rehabilitation of 4 air handlers
- new sprinkler systems
- replacement of fire alarm systems
- new electrical service entrances
- new panelboards
- upgraded emergency circuits
- correction of building code and accessibility deficiencies
- significant upgrades to technology infrastructure including telephone, data, audio-visual, and teaching podiums.
The project also included infrastructure upgrades to a primary data center located in the basement of Stevenson Hall. This data center is one of four that serve the ISU campus. Because there was insufficient space to relocate all building occupants during construction, a significant challenge of this project was to perform phased construction allowing each building to remain partially occupied throughout the rehabilitation, and keep the data center in full operation without interruption.
In addition, Clark Dietz analyzed and designed emergency power systems in these two buildings, specifically:
- replacement of emergency distribution system in Stevenson Hall, powered by an existing diesel standby generator
- addition of diesel standby generator and emergency distribution system in Turner Hall
- addition of 80 kW uninterrupted power supply for data center to emergency distribution system
- addition of 16kW uninterrupted power supply for ICN Room to emergency distribution system
- addition of cooling units for data center to emergency distribution system in Stevenson 7D.
