Cisco Offices & Lab

Columbia, MD

Bowman was responsible for the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering services for the new 97,000 sq. ft. Cisco project located in Columbia, Maryland. The office project includes the design and construction administration of corporate office space. The design modified the existing base building VAV system to meet the new tenant layout, and design new dedicated units to serve the new MDF and IDF rooms. The electrical design consists of lighting, fire alarm, and raceways for low voltage systems.

The lab portion of the project included renovating approximately 10,000 sq. f. of the existing facility to house the lab and related mechanical and electrical support spaces. The mechanical design consists of two 500-ton air-cooled chillers and a duplex pump package located on the roof of the building. Ducted up-flow computer room air handling units are located in the rack spaces with N+1 redundancy. Dedicated control systems provide for monitor and control of the HVAC equipment as well as monitoring and metering of the electrical equipment. The electrical design consists of two 2.5 Megawatt (MW) utility services from Baltimore Gas and Electric. Each service is backed up by a diesel fuel 2.5 MW generator. The new HVAC system and five 750 kVA Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) are fed from the new emergency distribution system.

Bowman also provided mechanical, electrical and plumbing commissioning services for the data center which operates as a Cisco testing Lab.  The electrical systems include a new main switchgear, paralleling switchgear, panel boards, generators, Manual Transfer Switches, Uninterrupted Power Supply Systems and remote power panels. The mechanical systems include new Computer Room AC (CRAC) Units, Air Handling Units, Air Cooled Chillers and pumps, a VRF system, control dampers, and an exhaust fan.

The commissioning services were extensive and included design reviews, construction site visits, scheduling meetings, and systems testing. The systems listed above were fully vetted during the functional testing of the systems. Additionally, aspects of the process were documented and combined in a report for delivery to the owner at project completion.