“One of the things that is different for project managers on the controls side that would differ from a mechanical contractor or a general contractor is the level of coordination that’s required,” Brown says, which includes getting mechanical contractors, plumbers, sheet metals, owners and commissioning agents on the same page so the project can move forward smoothly.  

Now that this portion of the Innovation Pointe development is complete, Brown shares insight on the process of building the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems for this building. 

The Innovation Pointe campus included four core building projects, with subsequent tenant improvement projects as different tenants signed leases. Overall, work took about 5 years.

Keeping the needs to today’s businesses in mind, Brown and the Harris team got to work to design a space that combined aesthetic, building automation, function and energy efficiency.

“We have a user interface for the owner, the tenant, or whoever is looking at that — it would kind of depend on the building,” he says. “But we have graphics pages and it’s just like it sounds. If you’re talking about an air handler, if you go to this interface, you’ll have a picture of an air handler and there’s a bunch of different readings they are taking, including discharged air, pressure inside of duct (and) temperature of the air.” 

Using a mix of outdoor air with return air aids in energy efficiency, as well. 

Visitors to the building may notice light fixtures hung from runs of rectangular and flat oval ductwork in several areas — close to the hangars for the ducting. Typically, Brown says, an area like this would be planned out using software that helps lay out where the components — pipes, sheet metal, etc. — would go. Instead, a different approach was used for the Innovation Pointe project. 

“Where you see those hangars and those lights and different things, that was all on-site coordination, and so we have to get creative to make those kinds of things happen while still trying to maintain the architect’s vision for the space,” Brown says. 

A unique aspect of this project is the brainchild of Harris: its telemetry program. Harris developed telemetry, Brown notes, and this feature is part of the Innovation Pointe project. 

“Telemetry is something that Harris has developed, and it is a program that it doesn’t have to be in a building where we have our controls, we can put it on top of any control system. It is constantly monitoring the building. We will go out to the site, we’ll add additional censors, we’ll take all information on the equipment that’s there. We figure out how old it is, we look at run time. What it’s doing is it’s constantly commissioning the site,” he says. Through the telemetry program, Harris is able predict the life cycle of equipment, and that’s something they can share with the owner — who gets a monthly report of issues in the building.