LADWP Water Quality Laboratory HVAC & Lab Controls

Prime on a working water-quality lab — HVAC, EcoStruxure EBO, and the full lab airflow control system, swapped in a 35-day shutdown.

A water-quality lab has to trust its own air. Fume hoods, biosafety cabinets, and snorkel exhausts keep the people safe and the samples clean, and they only do their job if the airflow holds exactly where it’s set. At LADWP’s water-quality laboratory in Pasadena, Athena was the prime contractor for the whole project — the HVAC, the building automation, and every bit of the lab’s airflow controls.

Athena ran design-assist on both the building automation and the lab control system, then built them. The controls went onto Schneider EcoStruxure Building Operation — open-protocol BACnet, built to LADWP’s standard. For the lab itself, we installed Accutrol AccuValve airflow valves across the supply, general exhaust, biosafety cabinets, fume hoods, and snorkel exhausts — venturi valves fast and precise enough to hold containment as a fume-hood sash moves — with fume-hood displays, sash sensors, and presence sensors all tied back to the front-end.

An entire lab’s HVAC, swapped in 35 days.

An entire lab’s HVAC, swapped in 35 days. The lab runs seven days a week, and it was occupied right up to the shutdown and again right after, so the changeover had to land inside a single 35-day window. Athena sequenced demolition and installation to fit it, then moved the finishing work (balancing, commissioning, and fume-hood certification) into night hours so the lab could come back online on schedule.

Two things made that clock harder. The project was delayed more than a year before the shutdown could be scheduled — so Athena stored all the equipment, inspected it by hand every year, and kept every warranty alive so nothing showed up dead or out of coverage. And the install fought the building: the custom air handlers had to thread past a structural steel screen to reach their platforms, and the Strobic high-plume exhaust fans were large enough to need their own truck just to get to the roof.

When the shutdown closed, LADWP’s lab came back to new mechanical systems, lab controls it could trust, and a front-end built to its own standard — on the day it was promised, after a year of keeping the equipment ready for it.

Client: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Delivery: Prime Contractor (design-assist on BAS and lab controls). Scope: HVAC replacement, MCC upgrade, Schneider EcoStruxure Building Operation controls, and a full Accutrol laboratory airflow system across fume hoods, biosafety cabinets, snorkel and general exhaust, plus new Strobic high-plume exhaust fans — self-performed by Athena Engineering and swapped in a 35-day shutdown.