Civic & Government
USPS Industry P&DC Controls & VAV Replacement
Controls and VAV upgrade — performed in a 24/7 USPS processing facility.
Client
United States Postal Service
Location
City of Industry, CA
Service Line
Some buildings get to take a night off. This one doesn’t.
The City of Industry Processing & Distribution Center is one of the main sorting hubs for the USPS across the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire — 350,000 packages a day on a quiet day, north of 510,000 when the holidays hit (the San Gabriel Valley Tribune called it a modern-day Santa’s workshop, and they weren’t far off). It runs 24 hours. So the real assignment wasn’t just the controls upgrade — it was doing the whole thing without ever stopping the mail.
Athena was awarded the project on a lump-sum base bid, direct to the Postal Service. The scope: replace the VAV boxes and the entire controls system for 25 existing air handlers, a zone-control system of 117 VAVs, and a central plant running three chillers with their supporting pumps and towers.
Here’s the thing, though — the spec wasn’t the ceiling. Our team designed a new controls system that came in cheaper than the original specification and worked better, built on a Schneider Electric EcoStruxure BACnet/IP backbone. Better system, lower number. That’s the kind of value engineering that earns the next phone call.
Then came the part that takes coordination most contractors would rather not sign up for. We self-perform both the mechanical and the controls work, so we put both crews on the same graveyard shifts and ran them in tandem. While the mechanical team swapped out all 117 VAV boxes overnight, the controls team pulled the existing controllers off the old boxes and moved them onto the new ones — keeping the zones alive through the transition. From there, controls replaced and upgraded every AHU and central plant controller to IP-based hardware.
Scheduling was the whole game.”
Scheduling was the whole game. On a building that never closes, you don’t get a shutdown window — you earn your downtime in the quiet hours and you give it back before the morning sort. The facility kept moving mail. The client and their people kept working.
What USPS got at the end: an entirely IP-based system, roughly 300 times faster in communication speed than what it replaced, cybersecure, and built to stay viable for the next 20 to 25 years. A 24-hour operation pulled into the 21st century — without missing a delivery day.
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