Civic & Government
Pomona Superior Courthouse BAS & Mechanical Upgrade
BAS and mechanical upgrade at an active Superior Court facility.
Client
Judicial Council of California
Location
Pomona, CA
Service Line
A full controls and mechanical retrofit of an occupied courthouse — asbestos containment built and torn down every night, eight floors, zero days of court lost.
“A courthouse doesn’t close so you can replace its controls. Pomona’s never did.
A courthouse doesn’t close so you can replace its controls. Pomona’s stayed open — eight floors of courtrooms and offices running every weekday — while Athena rebuilt the building’s automation system around it, after dark, behind asbestos containment that went up and came down every single night.
Athena won the project under an IDIQ with the Judicial Council of California and ran it as prime contractor, direct to the owner, with Kitchell serving as the JCC’s owner’s representative and construction manager. The job: replace the building management system across the entire courthouse and bring the mechanical plant with it — nine air handlers, 203 dual-duct VAV zones, two chillers, two cooling towers, two boilers, and the pumps and exhaust fans tying them together. The system was built to the court’s standard: Schneider SpaceLogic field controllers under a Niagara front-end.
Eight floors. Occupied all day. Rebuilt at night.
Eight floors, occupied all day, rebuilt at night. The ceiling spaces were classified hazardous — asbestos in nearly every void Athena needed to reach. So the work ran in after-hours shifts, floor by floor, with our demolition contractor setting mobile containment around each cluster of zones, abating only what the install touched, then breaking the containment back down before morning. Every morning the floor had to be clean and clear for court. Every night the containment went back up and the crews went back in.
Inside that rhythm, Athena re-controlled the whole building: new VAV controllers and space sensors across 203 zones, new two-way valves and actuators at the air handlers, new drives and motors, and full integration of the central plant (chillers, towers, and boilers) back to the front-end. Where existing panels and infrastructure could be reused, we reused them — which kept the cost down on a public budget.
“Every morning the floor had to be clean and clear for court. Every night the containment went back up and the crews went back in.
By completion, the Judicial Council had one open-protocol BACnet system running the entire courthouse, installed without the building missing a single day of court.
Client: Judicial Council of California. Owner’s Representative / Construction Manager: Kitchell. Delivery: Design-Build Prime Contractor (IDIQ). Scope: building-wide BAS replacement built to the court’s Niagara standard — Schneider SpaceLogic field controllers under a Niagara front-end — plus mechanical upgrades across nine air handlers and 203 VAV zones and central-plant integration, self-performed by Athena Engineering at night, behind daily asbestos containment, in a fully occupied courthouse.
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