On February 9, industry members of the Silicon Valley Working Group took a detour from their normal meeting site at the BEST Center/Laney College Campus, to be hosted by Alexandria Real Estate in San Francisco’s Mission Bay. After the meeting, there was a special tour of the UCSF Sandler Neuroscience Center conducted by Brian Raymond, Facilities Director and Frank Plut, Senior Engineer, two former students of the HPBOP (High-Performance Building Operations Professional) pilot training that was funded by PG&E and SCE.
The tour of the Sandler Neuroscience Center, a 237,000 square foot, five-story Neurosciences Laboratory and Clinical Research Building was a behind-the-scenes view from the facilities director about how they use their building automation system to manage the building’s performance. The director spoke about the building’s high-performance designs such as natural ventilation, radiant floors, daylighting, and indoor air quality. The laboratory facility is intended to produce 5.8 million pounds less of C02 per year than other similarly-sized laboratories.
The building was completed in 2012. It is one of the largest neurosciences complexes in the world and houses 100 principal investigators including a Nobel Prize winner in addition to 500 staff.
More about the building’s sustainability from Clark Construction’s website:
Though the facility earned LEED Gold, the Sandler Neurosciences Center’s sustainability goes beyond a certification. Sustainability and natural elements are an integral part of the building’s design and functionality. The project stands as a new model for sustainability in the research environment. In addition to the outdoor space, natural daylight, and its changing patterns throughout the day, along with access to views, plays a central role in creating humane workspaces and vibrant social and collaborative zones. The design-build team’s unique MEP strategy – planning for current needs, but allowing for expansion – combined with passive cooling in the atrium, and other savings mechanisms, resulted in a staggering 46% reduction in energy use as compared to a conventionally designed research building.
Several sustainability features include, an energy cost savings of 25.7% over the ASHRAE 90.1-2004 Appendix G baseline, diversion of nearly 92% of on-site generated waste during construction, utilization of low emitting finishes and materials throughout, and over 99% of building occupants have access to lighting controls for adjustment to suit individual task needs.