Wood Harbinger Wins Gold and Silver at 2017 ACEC Engineering Excellence Awards
Wood Harbinger is honored to have received Best in State Awards from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) for our work on the WSDOT State Route 520 Evergreen Point Floating Bridge and the Bellevue School District Enatai Elementary School. Our electrical and fire protection engineering as well as commissioning services for the SR-520 Bridge earned a Gold Award for “Complexity,” and our mechanical and electrical expertise for Enatai Elementary received a Silver Award for “Unique or Innovative Applications.” The 50th Annual ACEC Washington Engineering Excellence Awards ceremony was held on Friday evening, January 20th.
We are excited to share our accomplishments with our project teams and our clients. We worked with KPFF for our engineering effort on the SR-520 Bridge, and directly with contractor Kiewit/General/Manson for the bridge commissioning program. Integrus was the architect for Enatai Elementary.
Best in State Gold Award – Complexity: State Route 520 Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, WSDOT; Lake Washington, WA
Owner: WSDOT | Client: KPFF for design; KGM for commissioning.
The vastness of Lake Washington, at more than 200 feet deep and covering 34 square miles, necessitates a floating bridge. The new SR-520 Floating Bridge and Landings project is an iconic update to the Lake Washington landscape and transportation plan and is the longest floating bridge in the world. The 1.46-mile long bridge replaced aging infrastructure that was increasingly susceptible to wind and earthquake damage with a safer, more accessible structure that features wider shoulders, a new transit/HOV lane in each direction, a 14-foot wide bicycle and pedestrian path, and the ability to accommodate future light rail transportation.
Wood Harbinger’s commissioning team review the bridge’s fire protection system, which includes four vertical turbine fire pumps; a 1.4 mile-long, 8-inch standpipe; and a dozen hydrant connections on the road deck.
As part of a collaborative design-build team, Wood Harbinger provided electrical and fire protection engineering as well as commissioning for this important community project. Our fire protection design included fire hydrant replacement and connection to municipal water at the East Landing; fire pumps that extract water from Lake Washington, a standpipe system, and a dozen hydrant connections on the road deck.
The medium voltage electrical system and distribution supports the East Landings roadway, Maintenance Facility, and Floating Bridge elements. A standby generator can support the entire electrical and fire protection infrastructure. Our conduit and raceway systems support the intelligent traffic systems, bridge control and monitoring systems, and the traffic and security CCTV camera systems. We also provided lighting for the bridge and East Landing roadways, under deck maintenance, and navigation.
Four Sentinel towers rise above the roadway from underwater and serve as iconic landmarks for the new bridge. The architectural lighting system we commissioned is tied into the Bridge Control System.
Wood Harbinger’s commissioning team worked with the full project commissioning team to commission all fire protection, electrical, and Bridge Control System (BCS), and specialty systems unique to the floating bridge infrastructure.
Best in State Silver Award – Unique or Innovative Applications: Enatai Elementary School, Bellevue School District; Bellevue, WA
Owner: Bellevue School District | Client: Integrus Architecture
Bellevue School District’s Enatai Elementary School is a brand new, state-of-the-art education facility thanks to a capital construction bond passed in early 2014 and the efforts of a dedicated project team that brought this beacon of sustainability to life. At nearly 94,000 SF, the new two-story school is about a third again larger than the old school and makes great strides toward meeting the needs of the District’s growing student population.
The closed loop ground-source heat pump system includes a matrix of 82 wells positioned 340 deep under the playfield.
Wood Harbinger provided electrical and mechanical engineering for the demolition of the existing school and its replacement on the same site. The school utilizes cutting-edge integrated technology systems in the classrooms and multiple sustainable systems. Our mechanical design featured a ground-source heat pump system, utilizing a vertical geothermal loop to provide the heating and cooling to individual heat pumps with outside air recovery units serving each classroom, administrative spaces, the music room, the library, and the common areas. The ground loop systems includes a matrix of 144 wells positioned 340 deep under the playfield. Our plumbing design incorporated roof-mounted solar hot water heating panels to provide domestic hot water heating.
Solar hot water heating panels and solar photovoltaic panels contributed to Enatai Elementary’s high performance and sustainability goals.
Our electrical design featured highly efficient LED lighting throughout the school and solar photovoltaic panels rated for 99 kW on the roof. Our integrated communication and security design included telecomm, data, intrusion detection, an integrated clock/intercom system, fire alarm, and classroom A/V systems.
Best of the Best
42 projects were honored at this year’s ACEC Engineering Excellence Awards ceremony. We congratulate our peers for their innovative and inspiring engineering work!
Read more about the 2017 Engineering Excellence Awards in the Seattle DJC’s January special section here.