Civic & Government
Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility Expansion
HVAC and BAS for a correctional facility expansion — new central plant, AHUs, controls.
Client
Bernards Construction
Location
Banning, CA
Service Line
HVAC, central-plant mechanical, and EcoStruxure building automation for a 173,000-square-foot correctional housing expansion — engineered for a secure, all-weather environment.
Owner: County of Riverside
Location: Banning, CA
Service Line: Mechanical HVAC (in-house BIM/CADD coordination)
The Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning expanded under a Phase III project that added a new 294-cell, 173,000-square-foot housing building, along with transport holding, administrative offices, and other support space, plus a separate central plant building housing the mechanical equipment that serves it. The addition brought 582 beds and grew the county’s vocational, medical, and mental-health capacity. Athena handled the HVAC, the central-plant mechanical, and the building automation, with the County of Riverside as owner and Bernards as general contractor.
A correctional facility puts demands on a mechanical system that an office never will. Equipment, diffusers, and ductwork had to be concealed and protected, inside and out, so the system stays out of view and out of reach. Much of it also lives outdoors, exposed to weather and wide swings in ambient temperature. We engineered and installed for both.
We modeled the work in-house, producing all our own CADD drawings so we could coordinate the installation tightly, especially in the spots where space and access were limited. The HVAC and central-plant scope took in McQuay rooftop air handlers, chillers, ducting, new mechanical piping and valves, and mechanical insulation: the air-side in the housing building, and the heating and cooling plant in the central building that feeds it.
Controls in a correctional setting answer to rules a commercial building never sees.
We also provided the building automation, a Schneider Electric EcoStruxure system, and controls in a correctional setting answer to rules a commercial building never sees. Field devices in inmate-accessible areas have to be hardened, tamper-resistant, and free of ligature points, kept where they can’t be reached, damaged, or misused. The controls themselves sit in secured spaces, and the network is kept isolated and access-controlled. Because ventilation and smoke control are life-safety systems in a locked building, the system has to run without interruption — and any service on it happens with cleared personnel, under escort, scheduled around the facility’s security operations.
We didn’t hand it over and walk away. Athena still services all of it — the HVAC, the central plant, and the EcoStruxure controls — at Larry D. Smith and across dozens of other County of Riverside public-safety facilities, a relationship measured in years.
Owner: County of Riverside. General Contractor: Bernards. Athena scope: mechanical HVAC and central-plant mechanical (McQuay rooftop air handlers, chillers, ducting, mechanical piping and valves, insulation) and Schneider Electric EcoStruxure building automation, with in-house BIM/CADD coordination and ongoing service of the HVAC, central plant, and controls.
Related County of Riverside work: Riverside Juvenile Court.
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