Building Nevada - December 2004

Hard Hat, High Tech

How Technology is Changing Construction

by Jennifer Rachel Baumer

David LaPlante, CEO, Twelve Horses North America, is on the road a lot. With clients and employees worldwide, he spends less time in his office than he does in his conference room and less time there than he does ... well, elsewhere.

But wherever he goes, he takes his phone. Big deal. Cell phone, right? Not exactly. LaPlante’s phone can plug into any data port anywhere and function as office phone and computer, and allow clients to reach him at his own extension. That’s high-tech, and it’s right at home in the conference room at Twelve Horses’ office at the Reno/Tahoe Tech Center.

The conference room sports a big horseshoe-shaped table with 15 stations so everyone present can be plugged in to power, data and VGA ports and connected to the Internet while video-conferencing on two major display screens and talking via microphones at every station rather than through a central speaker phone.

"It sounds like overkill. But I can’t tell you how much more productive that is," said LaPlante. "So much we do in the world today is mobile commuting and mobile collaborating. I spend my life in the conference room. With customers and employees all over the globe and employees, we spend time on Web connections and conference calls."

What Technology People Want

Technology is changing the way people do business, the speed at which they do business, and now the locations at which they do business. Technology is also changing construction. Architects and builders are seeing a demand for flexibility from end-users of their products. Remember when buildings went up and stayed up, and moving a wall or installing a new phone meant you knocked down a wall or at least put a hole in it?

"Flexibility is the key," said Christopher Larsen, managing partner of Dekker/Perich/Holmes/Sabatini Ltd., architects. "When dollars are tight – especially in public buildings, but even with private developers – builders want to provide as much flexibility as possible so changes in the future are easier and cheaper."

Currently, Larsen’s company is working on the State of Nevada Department of Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) headquarters in Las Vegas, factoring in raised floors throughout, which will allow for flexibility to change cabling as work stations and office layouts change. The DETR building also incorporates de-mountable walls. Rather than hard walls fixed in place, these are wall systems on wheels, almost as easy to move as furniture. "As their work force increases or mission changes, they want flexibility in the building. This allows them, as their call center expands, to have the room and the technology to expand with it," Larsen said.

Another wave of the future is wireless technology. More customers are opting to put wireless systems in place even when the technology isn’t quite there yet, said Larsen. When it comes to spec buildings, "I think to be competitive, especially in private-sector office buildings, developers have to look for the cutting edge. If they can build in some of that, their project will be more attractive to prospective tenants and buyers."

"New and improved" are also valuable buzzwords. The brand-new Reno/Tahoe Tech Center appealed to Twelve Horses’ management team when they made the decision to land in Reno. They were only the second tenant to move into the center. The general contractor for the facility, Devcon Construction Incorporated, came from company headquarters in San Jose to work with Tanamera, the project’s developer, to produce a tech center with its own co-location data center, a lifeline offering redundant systems to circumvent disruptions to users’ servers. "The center is leading-edge technology," said Gary Filizetti, president of Devcon. "You have leading-edge redundancy with data centers. It’s as up-to-date as any data center we’ve built for any company this year."

Where People Want the Technology They Want

Not all new technology is being used in buildings. Some of it is being used in holes in the ground. ReTRAC, Granite Construction/City of Reno’s train-trench project, is using a system called ReTRAC.info, which provides mitigation monitoring data, data management and reporting in real-time via a Web-based, wireless system.

But with buildings, technology is even changing the fundamental design. More "trays," "raceways" and "chases" are going in, all methods of wiring that allow mobility for work stations.

Spaces themselves are changing. "More and more, interstitial space between ceilings and floors is increasing because the amount of infrastructure needed to distribute technology throughout buildings is increasing," said John Anderson, principal/project manager for Martin-Harris Construction.

Wiring and cabling can flow under the floor rather than overhead, using cast-concrete panels that provide solid, sound floors, as well as access and distribution for all electrical and telecommunications wires and cables. Advantages include not having maintenance staff working overhead to fix problems, and having plug-and-play electrical and data systems that can be easily moved or modified.

Under-floor air systems are more effective – heating and air conditioning start at the floor level where people are, rather than being forced down, resulting in energy savings. They also provide better air quality – thermal displacement means the air is rising, so particulates in the rising air are taken out at ceiling level. "Employees call in sick a lot less and it’s a lot healthier building," said Anderson.

Buildings with Backbones ... and Their Own Climates

Not every new building utilizes under-floor systems. The Community College of Southern Nevada (CCSN) Telecommunications Building is built around a central core, or spine, used as a main distribution system for the building and also to teach cabling technologies. The contractor (Martin-Harris Construction) and architect (JMA Architecture Studios) worked together on the Nevada Department of Public Works project as a design/build project, a process that reduces normal approval times.

"I’ve heard several different estimates about how much time was saved [by being a design/build project], but best estimate is that it reduced the normal delivery period for the state of Nevada by about a year," said Frank Martin, president and owner of Martin-Harris Construction.

According to Warren Hioki, associate dean, Division of Information Technology and Telecom, CCSN, the new building serves three departments: engineering technology, media technologies and information technology. Classes include everything from Cisco networking to digital photography, animation and Web design, and they are offered in a 40,000-square-foot building with smart classrooms featuring wireless Internet access for students and staff throughout – the first fully wireless CCSN building. The roof will even feature an antenna farm, where students will conduct radio-frequency and microwave measurements on antenna radiation patterns.

The contractor installed raceways and cable-tray capabilities during the construction process, but the technology itself – the devices and hubs – were installed by the Community College to fit current curriculum, while providing teaching opportunities for telecommunications students. The unique wiring system comes into play on the top and bottom floors. "The intent is to allow faculty and staff to cart expensive equipment in and out of the central spine and to go from room to room. All the surrounding classrooms have direct access to the spine, but because of the expensive equipment housed there, only faculty can enter the area, and there are security cameras to protect the equipment," said Hioki.

Even sunlight becomes high-tech on the second floor, with controlled skylight domes in classrooms. Controlled by switches, they’re part of the energy conservation system, all part of the building’s LEEDs certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a national standard for sustainable use that rates buildings on energy savings and use of recycled and recyclable materials. The CCSN building is designed with a commissioning process in place to assure systems function as they’re supposed to, said Tom Schoeman, president of JMA Architecture Studios.

"We want to do as much energy recovery in mechanical systems as we can to reduce energy consumption in the building," said Schoeman. "Another thing prevalent in sustainable buildings is looking much harder at the relationship between architecture and mechanical systems. So we do extensive modeling of the system – energy modeling looking at the skin of the building, the envelope, windows versus non-window areas, how that affects mechanical systems, and how we can reduce heating and air conditioning requirements by introducing daylight."

Specialized buildings require specialized technology. The 55,000-square-foot Nevada Museum of Art, just a year old, utilizes state-of-the-art technology in three major areas: climate control, security and audio-visual. Museums throughout the country are required to conform to standards of humidity and climate control to avoid damaging works of art. A wood sculpture coming from the East Coast would crack in Nevada’s dry climate, for example. But there’s no point humidifying the entire building, so special systems keep just the galleries running at a constant 50 percent humidity and 70 degree temperature with very tight tolerances.

"We try to be efficient," said Steven High, director and CEO of the museum, "but realize the building functions 365 days a year, 24 hours a day with tolerances in place."

Meanwhile, the museum’s audio-visual system is astounding, with a sound-matrix headquarters to control sound throughout the building and a digital projection system in the theater, and the ability to send signals through the building so a projector in the theater can also project into the Founder’s Room, the atrium or up onto the rooftop and – with satellite relays – to public-access television.

The Wave of the Future

Buildings are riding the wave of the future. Yet the future just might do away with the need for more buildings – "A laptop, PDA, cell phone, conference call number, Web connection and Internet access – that’s all I need," said LaPlante. "The physical office location becomes a place just to store the piles and piles of trade journals I get and a place to meet with people in person."