The Chemstress HVAC group within the Mechanical Department provides heating, ventilation (general building, process spot, and emergency evacuation), air conditioning, dust collection, plumbing and fire protection design support for our manufacturing and process related projects. HVAC services range from initial conceptual design and preliminary estimating to construction documents. Services also include existing system evaluation and recommendations to assess their availability for renovation or reuse.
The Chemstress HVAC group has a long history of designing “Special Use” HVAC systems for Chemical Laboratories, High Hazard and potentially explosive occupancies, and designing HVAC systems to contain and minimize Class I, Division 1 areas and to provide pressurization to allow for unclassified areas based on current code requirements.
Chemstress also has a history of successful design of plant and corporate office buildings, laboratories (QC and research facilities), employee services (locker & shower, and cafeteria buildings), maintenance and control facilities, and warehouses (plant & distribution warehouses).
Services
Conceptual Design
The HVAC group works closely with the client, process design engineers and the architect(s) to determine a design focused on the project goals and requirements for various processes and building types. The HVAC group researches the minimum and recommended requirements per the mechanical codes, NFPA®*, ASHRAE®**, Industrial Ventilation “A manual of recommended practice”, energy conservation, and good engineering practice based on each particular process and building type.
Estimating
The HVAC group is responsible for the heating, ventilating, air conditioning, dust collection, plumbing, and fire protection portions of construction estimates performed during several stages of the design process. Chemstress uses a proprietary based database program to produce the detail work items of the project. In addition to the use of national standard cost data sources (R.S. Means***, cost data, and others), Chemstress’ estimate database allows us to use costs from similar projects that we have estimated in the past. Accuracy of cost estimates is based on the level of design completed on a project, and Chemstress has estimating experience on a full range of multi-discipline projects including “grass roots” and plant modifications.
Detail Design
The HVAC group is responsible for a sound design based on the requirements of the various codes, and the particular process and building requirements. Chemstress has experience with both traditional and design/build design environments serving a wide variety of multi-discipline projects.
*NFPA® is a registered trademark of NFPA.
**ASHRAE® is a registered trademark of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers
***RS Means is a product line of Reed Construction Data. |
