This Month’s Articles:
- ESSE Completes Project for Athens/Clark County and Stone Mountain Park
- Generac Generators Available For BIM Software
- Data Center Design
- Power Design Pro™: Load Sequencing
- Generac Ties for “Newsmaker of the Year”
ESSE Completes Project for Athens/Clark County and Stone Mountain Park
Energy Systems Southeast has been busy! One of our recent projects was for the Athens-Clark County Jail Expansion (see photo). The challenge on this project was creating redundancy for critical loads. We also continue to work to service the emergency power needs for Stone Mountain Park.
The jail expansion project includes the renovation and construction of jail facilities to expand the housing and administrative support capabilities of jail. This will allow the county to properly house and effectively manage the estimated inmate population through 2024, which is currently projected to be approximately 750 inmates.
The expanded jail facilities include areas for inmate processing, inmate housing, and judicial space as well as staff for supervision of inmates, support services for inmates, management/administrative staff of the Sheriff’s Office, and other related functions.
For Stone Mountain Park we implemented generator monitoring that allows the Park to constantly monitor the emergency power system. To learn more about the solutions proposed for each project – watch our video customer testimonial from Dan Schmidt, Facility Manager at Stone Mountain and view our featured project page. We will also be adding more featured projects in the future, so check back often.
Generac Generators Available for BIM Software
Generac has created 3D commercial generator models specifically for Building Information Modeling (BIM) software programs. The models are available through Seek.Autodesk.com, Generac.com or contact us for assistance.
BIM is an intelligent model-based process that helps plan, design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure. With building owners and the public asking for more thoughtful and “green” building design, BIM provides engineers and contractors with the tools needed to design intelligent buildings that conserve resources while meeting the ever-growing energy and ergonomic demands of building occupants.
Within BIM, each element has all of the characteristics – both physical and logical – of their real counterparts, based on a single definition of each item. When a change is made to one element, it permeates throughout all the drawings and related models.
This highlights a key difference between BIM and CAD. When a change is made in a CAD drawing, it must be remembered and manually transferred to all the other pertinent CAD drawings. This manual labor intensive labor intensive process is often fraught with human errors, requiring last minute changes. With BIM This process all happens automatically.
Use of BIM software has increased significantly due to the complexity and costs involved with today’s sophisticated design/build processes. Users can visualize, simulate and analyze real-world appearance performance and cost.
Additionally, a virtual information model can be handed from the design team (architects, civil, structural and building services engineers, etc.) to the main contractor and subcontractors and then on to the owner/operator. This reduces the potential for information losses that may occur when a new team takes ownership of the project, and provides more extensive information to owners of complex structures for facility management.
Autodesk® Revit® is the leading 3D BIM application on the market and it includes features for architectural design; mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP); structural engineering, and construction.
One of the disadvantages to using software like Autodesk Revit is the effort required at the front-end of a project to load all the appropriate information for each element along with obtaining all the 3D models for each element. There are tools, however, that are making this process simpler, such as databases and storehouses for specific equipment needs. For example, Autodesk Revit links directly to a building product repository called SEEK, that hosts manufacturer-specific content. With Generac models available on seek.autodesk.com, Revit users can access gensets with just a few clicks.
In addition, the Generac 3D models have undergone quality assurance testing and are vetted to meet the requirements of the Revit program. And, as new gensets and accessories are introduced to the marketplace, the corresponding models will be added for Revit and other BIM software programs.