By: Phil McCrory

My grandson is getting into beekeeping, so here are some pictures of this in our garden. We ordered a crate of bees from California. If you look close at the first picture of the white crate you can see thousands of legs of bees sticking thru the slots trying to escape. Do you know the feeling of taking off the lid to this crate and watching 1000s of bees take off; their first chance of freedom after being in a truck for three days. But in just a few moments the bees found their new home and settled in. It was fascinating to sit there and watch how they got all organized. We never got stung.

Now the bees are out and about the neighbor gathering their pollen. Sadly, the neighbors are opposed to bees and raising bees. When they see bees in their yard they think they are dangerous and start spraying them. And the neighbors don’t hesitate to tell us they will continue to use pesticides in their yard, which may kill off the bees. I can’t figure out why people want to poison our earth just to have pretty grass.

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William Paterson University contracted Horizon Engineering Associates, LLP (HEA) to provide commissioning services for the College Hall HVAC Project. Services included commissioning of mechanical, control systems and balancing verification. The goal of the commissioning process was to ensure that William Paterson University received a building that operated and performed per the engineer’s and architect’s intended design as well as to provide the owner’s staff with the training and documents needed for continual maintenance and operation of the building well into the future. All deficient items identified during the commissioning process were documented and as a result, over 15 deficiencies were identified.

Client: William Paterson University of New Jersey (WPU)  

Location: Wayne, NJ

Q/A with Chris Fischer, Project Engineer

When first contracted for this project, what did the client express as the main goal/most pressing need for our services to accomplish?

William Paterson University’s Capital Planning team expressed concerns over the project being completed prior to the contractor walking away. Additionally, the operation of the building had not been working as required for years, and the importance of the offices being more comfortable was often expressed.

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Can you spot the flaw here?

Answer:...

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Meet Kieran Tracy! He is a Field Engineer working in our NYC office and was recently selected as an Employee of the Month! Here's a quick Q/A with him: Who would you like to swap places with for a day? My 6 month old nephew. He has a... Read More

Back in 2012, Horizon Engineering Associates, LLP (HEA) was contracted to provide commissioning services for the Golisano Children’s Hospital project, the largest capital project in the University of Rochester’s history. The new 8-story tower has approximately 245,000 sf and contains a two-story atrium, imaging suites, conference centers, operating rooms, neonatal intensive care unit, private patient rooms, resource library and playrooms.

Now completed, HEA provided LEED commissioning services to satisfy the LEED Energy and Atmosphere Prerequisite 1: Fundamental Commissioning of the Building Energy Systems and Credit 3: Enhanced Commissioning for the project. Systems commissioned included plumbing, BMS/controls, lighting controls, fan coil units, VAV boxes, electric heaters, AHUs, exhaust fans, snow melt and chilled water pumps.

Client: University of Rochester  

SF: 245,000 sf

Q/A with Scott Lance, Engineering Manager

Based off of client feedback, where do you feel HEA’s services provided the most value to this project?

HEA provided the most value on this project by having a Commissioning Team that was able to navigate through Siemens Apogee and Desigo User Interfaces. By utilizing former Siemens Employees HEA was able to determine issues down to the actual line of programming with out the assistance of the controls vendor. This helped to gain days on a tight project schedule since HEA and Siemens could work independently from each other. Typically on commissioning projects the controls vendor would have to assist the CxA during testing, since this now was not required the CxA could test out system and any operational issues or enhancements required could then be worked on by the controls vendor in a faster fashion then typical.

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Can you spot the flaw here?

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HEA was contracted by the New York-Presbyterian Hospital to perform commissioning services for the Allen Hospital Central Sterilization project. The project was a facility upgrade and renovation that was originally conceived to accommodate the growing requirements for sterilization services and included an MEP upgrade of the existing central sterilization facility to accommodate for new equipment. The upgrades also included the installation of a pre-fabricated high pressure steam boiler plant that provided steam to the new facility in such a manner that allowed for redundancy and did not require a high pressure steam supply or a consistent high pressure operator presence.

HEA was responsible for the commissioning of the facility’s following systems: ductwork, roof top packaged AC unit, VAVs, exhaust fans, electric unit heaters, steam piping, steam boilers, semi-instantaneous hot water heaters, humidifier, building automation, electrical panels, transformers, heat trace, feed water pumps, AC compressor and RO filtration. HEA’s commissioning process included all work required to satisfy the LEED project requirements for EA Prerequisite 1, Fundamental Building Systems Commissioning and EA Credit 3, Enhanced Commissioning.

Client: New York-Presbyterian Hospital

Location: New York, NY

Q/A with Mykhaylo Hroshko

When first contracted for this project, what did the client express as the main goal / most pressing need for our services to accomplish?

The main goal for this new rooftop boiler plant was to have it provide enough stream pressure to the central sterilization plant located in the basement without having to operate a high pressure boiler; which would require a staffed boiler watch. The incorporated boiler plant combined four (4) low pressure boilers (1/4 is for standby/switchover purposes) that supply steam through one manifold to the sterilization plant. The most pressing need for our services to accomplish was to ensure that all boilers were operating as designed as well as to properly train the staff on how to maintain, operate and switchover boilers.

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