Civic & Government
Clara Shortridge Criminal Courts Pneumatic Replacement
Phased pneumatic-to-DDC conversion in an active courthouse.
Client
Judicial Council of California
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Service Line
A floor-by-floor pneumatic controls replacement in a working downtown courthouse — graveyard shifts, asbestos containment, the last floor finished through COVID.
Client: Los Angeles County Internal Services Department
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Service Line: HVAC Controls Replacement
The Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center is LA County’s criminal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles — renamed in 2002 for Clara Foltz, the first woman to practice law on the West Coast and the person who first proposed the public defender’s office. Athena replaced the pneumatic controls floor by floor, working the 16th, 17th, and 18th, with each floor awarded after the one before it. The 18th houses the county’s child support services department; the floors run roughly 54,000 square feet apiece.
On each floor, the job was a full replacement of the pneumatic system: new tubing for every VAV box, device, and thermostat, new actuators throughout, and a complete air balance once it was back together.
What made it hard wasn’t the controls. The courthouse stayed fully operational, so the work ran on graveyard shifts. The floors were full of asbestos-containing material — every phase required containment, specialized safety training, respirators, and hazmat suiting, with the floor held under negative pressure so nothing could migrate into the rest of the building.
Getting awarded each floor in turn is its own kind of review. By the last one, the crews were working through COVID, pandemic protocols stacked on top of the asbestos containment already in place.
On a working courthouse floor, the measure of the job is that no one noticed it happening.
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