Navy Information Technology Centers

UNO Research Development Park

This $20 million project consisted of constructing two identical five-story buildings for the Navy’s Personnel Information section. This project required state of the art technology for NPI’s world-wide tracking of personnel. Each building is 103,500 square feet and is built on the University of New Orleans’ Research & Technology Park. The entire project was programmed, designed, constructed and occupied under 18 months. Moses Engineers’ provided all mechanical, electrical engineering and fire protection.

Mechanical engineering services included:

• bringing the site utilities to the building for potable water, sanitary sewer and storm sewer. 
• making each floor its own vertical self-contained air handling unit sized for that floor. The air distribution system is variable air volume controlled by ductmounted pressure sensors. Through the use of electric VAV box mounted heaters, the system can provide cooling to the interior zones and heat as required on the perimeter. 
• providing an advanced energy management system designed as a distributed architecture system.

Electrical services included:

• power
• emergency power
• lighting
• fire alarm
• data and lightning protection. 
• furniture systems designed for the Navy tenant included coordination of power, voice communications and data. During renovations, power had to be substantially increased to certain building areas. This was accomplished without compromising or delaying other aspects of the project’s demands. 
• an electrical distribution system with 480/277 volt and a 120/208 volt 3 phase 4-wire grounded wire. 
• a main switchboard  
• separate bus ducts designed for the mechanical equipment requirements and for lighting and general power. 
• a 75 KVA, 480 V primary to 120/208 volt secondary transformer for each floor. 
• Separate panels for lighting and power on each floor. 
• An advanced audio/visual teleconferencing center designed in conjunction with Sigcom. 
• only one fire pump installed for both buildings achieved by designing an interlocking control scheme thus saving considerable expense. 
• As these buildings house critical strategic defense operations, the computer center had to be designed to withstand extended power outages. Our design includes the appropriately sized emergency generators, UPS, and backup A/C in the event that building services are disabled for an extended time period.