ABN AMRO – Critical Facility Commissioning
Apr 24, 2013
ABN AMRO
Critical Facility Commissioning
Chicago, Illinois
The project included commissioning a new data center for a 30-story building located in Chicago, where floors 3, 4, and 5 were used for the data center. The project included 80,000 square feet of raised floor for the data center. The mechanical and electrical infrastructure included the following:
- Central chilled water plant with six (6) 1,000 ton chillers.
- Fully redundant Tier IV, 2(N+1).
- Protected power systems includes 6,000 kVA of uninterruptible power systems in a multi-module A/B configuration.
- Stand-by power includes six (6) 2 megawatt diesel generators.
- Located in downtown Chicago, we set up an extension office at the site during the commissioning process for the months of May, June, July, and August.
Limited Schedule
We arrived on this site in April; the data center was scheduled to go live by September 1st. When we arrived, the 30-story building was still well under construction, with unopenable elevators. Our scope of work was to provide a comprehensive engineering evaluation and report. From this review, we developed a comprehensive commissioning plan to bring the data center on-line and on schedule.
To ensure that we could meet the project objectives, we provided daily observation and inspections of the systems as they were being installed. This minimized the commissioning time-line that is normally required once the systems are installed. We chaired weekly commissioning meetings with all the contractors outlining requirements and necessary tasks needed to meet the on-line date. Working side-by-side with the installing contractors, design engineers, and facility managers, we were able to effectively eliminate potential operational problems during the installation.
Exceeding Client Expectations
Eighteen months after the project completion, we provided Level 5 annual commissioning for this project. This included load testing generators and UPS modules. The scope of work included performing battery discharge testing for UPS batteries and integration testing of alarms and redundant systems. Services provided for annual commissioning included:
- Detailed step-by-step method of procedures
- Load bank coordination and installation supervision
- On-site supervision during all testing
- Integration testing of alarms and monitoring systems
