Philadelphia Forensic Science Center

Lessons Learned

Shortly after award of the project, we began to get a sense of how pre-wired the criteria for forensic laboratories had become. For example, various experts told us that we had to have a 200-pound live-load capacity throughout, so we couldn't possibly use a building with less than half that capacity. We quickly became aware of just how wasteful the recommended standards for material energy and redundant capacity were. Ultimately, we were able to accommodate all lab functions with little or no building load capacity modifications.

The Siemens building management system key to pulling off the high level of system cohesion and particularly fume hood performance. Although we had firm agreement that this particular system and the three-year maintenance contract would be through Siemens, an unrelated incident of corruption within the bidding procedures of the City of Philadelphia had the effect of “blowing up” this agreement. We were told that the project would be bid with multiple contractors and that we were required to accept the lowest bid. The project manager continued to stand by our recommendations, however, and we were successful in getting the Siemens system. The lesson to take away from this is that any new field (sustainability being only one) has few seasoned players, and those limits can easily unseat a year's work or undercut a key project driver.

A fundamental conclusion of our team is that it's wise to place the high-performance "intelligence" in the processors and software, which are highly reliable. We then select basic highly reliable operating systems that are leveraged through integration with the processor or, in this case, the building management system.

Given the added layers of fume hoods, the heightened security demands, and the inability to fully commission the system, we were able to incorporate a three-year ongoing maintenance and operations contract with Siemens, who owns the system.

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Our thanks to the ENERGY STAR program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and to the U.S. Department of Energy, and to BuildingGreen, Inc. for hosting the submission and judging forms.

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