Tackling Tight Spaces: P1 Teams Pull Together to Execute Data Center Coordination and Installation
Tired of hearing us talk about how great P1’s single-source capabilities are? Too bad.
“All trades under one roof” is exactly what’s turning a job with some challenging physical constraints into another P1 success story.
According to Project Manager Casey Sheafer, the Kansas confidential mission critical data center expansion project had some items that required careful consideration and dedicated design leadership – and P1 was up to the task.
The P1 team installed three megawatt generators, 1,000 feet of electrical duct banks, and two 4,000 amp services, for a contract amount of $14,000,000.00.
Capabilities included Virtual Design and Construction (BIM); electrical, pipe, plumbing, and sheet metal fabrication; Millwrights; electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and mechanical construction; and commissioning.
Casey says the knowledgeable P1 team was able to help lead project decisions to ensure proper placement.
“P1 helped drive a lot of the decisions in our submittals and shop drawings, thanks to multi-trade expertise,” he said.
Next, the team found themselves applying some creativity to work within the tight space.
“There was a lot of underground conduit and mechanical work, and concrete foundation work,” Casey said. “We had to come up with a design to fit everything in the limited space.”
Electrical VDC Specialist Justin Underwood notes that when VDC embarks on a project, there’s more to just creating the drawings and handing them off to fabrication or the field.
“We had to work back and forth with the foreman and project manager to understand the design we’d have to come up with,” Justin said. “There’s lots of collaboration between VDC and the field on what those drawings should look like, and how to route the elements the way the foreman needs it.”
Justin says the goal is to create something that fits the way the foreman would install it even if VDC and fabrication weren’t part of the process.
“We spend hours in meetings on how to route it, and the best preferred methods,” Justin said.
Justin adds that the electrical modeling was more time-consuming due to “redundant wiring”, which is common in data centers.
“Redundant wiring means there’s an “a” side and “b” side, so conduit to a piece of gear has to be done twice,” Justin explained. “If one side fails, the other will pick it up, to ensure there will never be loss of power.”
VDC brought multiple trades to the table on this project, including plumbing, sheet metal, and electrical.
“This was one of the more rare projects in which we had so many trades from P1 on board,” Justin said.
And both Casey and Justin agree: that is the ideal situation.
“Being a single-source provider with the opportunity to have those multiple trades on one job means we can communicate verbally within seconds since we’re all together, rather than send an email to an outside contractor,” Justin said.
“We were able to have Turner in the same room with the multiple disciplines of VDC and get quick turnarounds on changes,” Casey added.
P1’s single source value-add on this project extends to P1 Millwrights, who set the massive equipment, and P1 Service will join P1 Construction and select third party vendors to perform the commissioning when the project is ready.
“Critical environments like data centers have a major commissioning process,” Casey explained. “It includes all the pre-checks for electrical and mechanical. Then, over a week, there is a full-system check where the utility drops power to the building, batteries kick in and are tested, generators kick in and are tested, etc. It’s a pretty long process.”
P1 single-source to the rescue again, tackling tight timelines and tight spaces for a project done right!
MEP Project Across Capabilities
Virtual Design and Construction (VDC): electrical, plumbing, sheet metal
Fabrication: electrical, pipe, plumbing, sheet metal
Millwrights
Construction:electrical, HVAC, plumbing, mechanical
Commissioning
Installation:
- (3) megawatt generators
- 1,000 feet of electrical duct banks
- (2) 4,000 amp services
Contract Value: $14,000,000.00
Project Team
Casey Sheafer: Electrical Project Manager
Rick Ellis: Mechanical Project Manager
Paul Groff and John Barszczak:
Electrical General Foremen
Michael Dell: Electrical Foreman
Wes Trammel: Millwright Manpower Coordinator
RG Stewart: VDC Pipe/Plumbing Specialist
James Daugherty and Rachel Toney:
VDC Sheet Metal Specialists
Justin Underwood: VDC Electrical Specialist
Vicki Jesse: Project Coordinator
