Case Study: Rapid, Responsive Installation Capabilities

In a long, hot summer, what happens when the five cooling towers supporting a government agency are 20 years old and failing?

Situation

The five cooling towers located atop 400 C Street in Southwest Washington, D.C., were consistently failing. The towers were springing leaks, shutting down and struggling with the heat load. Because the cooling towers supported commercial office space, restaurants, and offices of the US Department of State, the owner needed the transition to new towers to be seamless.

The towers needed to be replaced. Money was being spent to repair the existing towers when they well exceeded their useful life expectancy - economically it no longer made sense to make band-aid repairs.
- Matt Wert, CBS Installation Manager

Solution

Complete Building Services proposed an installation schedule for the new, redesigned cooling towers. CBS’s proposal was cost-effective, but it also minimized disruptions to the tenants, including the State Department.

The CBS installation team consisted of the service department manager, two pipefitters, one plumber, two apprentices, three electricians and several automated controls technicians. CBS also assembled local, responsive subcontractors to support in insulating, welding, rigging and fabricating structural steel.

Shutdown occurred at 7 pm Friday evening, and the CBS team worked uninterrupted for 55 hours until 2 am Monday morning. This same team was assembled with the same schedule on the following weekend to complete Phase 2. In total, five failing cooling towers were replaced with two 500-ton, one 300-ton and one 250-ton cooling towers with minimal disruption to agency operations.

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