Utilities and Infrastructure Master Plan, University

Doherty Engineering completed a multi-phased 30-year Utilities and Infrastructure Master Plan for a university campus. Project objectives involved determining age and capabilities of existing equipment and infrastructure, development of a 30-year plan to replace aging assets and infrastructure, meet the needs of a developing campus, remedy existing issues and bottlenecks, improve the redundancy and resiliency of the system, reduce overall energy consumption and reduce GHG emissions. Project scope included detailed site investigations of each building and central plant, including underground distribution infrastructure, modelling energy and utilities loads for existing and future buildings, and development of a campus infrastructure plan. Concept drawings were created indicating the evolution of the infrastructure for each system. District energy and sustainability was emphasized by centralizing all heating and cooling utilities with a robust distribution infrastructure, combined heat and power (CHP), sources of renewable power generation, and a complete conversion from steam to low temperature hot water heating to reduce energy consumption and facilitate the incorporation of innovative green technologies such as geo-exchange heat pumps, solar heating and hot water storage.