LMH Health – AHU-7 Replacement

LMH Health engaged 5BY5 Engineers to replace their existing AHU-7 with 2 units that can back-feed one another in the event of failure or maintenance shutdowns.

Prior to our engagement in this project, this unit sat in an open-air penthouse and the old air handling unit AHU-7 served 3 floors of North Tower patient rooms. This unit was original to the building and was installed in 1977. Because its age correlated with dwindling performance (capacity), limited and inaccurate controls, and outright failure of components, we needed to work diligently and efficiently.

We were presented with numerous challenges in regard to this project which involved replacing the existing AHU-7, enclosing and conditioning the existing penthouse, and replacing the existing power, chilled water, and steam utilities that serve this penthouse.

The phasing of work presented the largest challenge. The old AHU-7 had to remain operational until one of the two new AHUs was installed and could take over. These AHUs serve patient rooms of a hospital, so downtime had to be kept as minimal as possible. Luckily, this is our favorite type of project and we have much experience with this work.

In fact, 5BY5 provided on-call consulting services to LMH Health for a number of years prior to this project. Our knowledge of the campus as a whole, our experience in MEP engineering for hospitals, and our relationship with LMH Health facilities led to our being selected for this project.

After our completion of this project, the new AHU-7 and AHU-8 have been fully operational since the Fall of 2022. 5BY5 is nearing the completion of seasonal commissioning functional performance testing over these units’ first year of operation. It is an important aspect of our procedures to ensure these systems are running the way we intended them to and are incorporating with the existing systems over time.

As a direct result of the work on this project, the North Tower now has more heating and cooling capacity, the redundancy that AHU-7 and AHU-8 provide to each other minimizes downtime, and controls for AHU-7 and AHU-8 allow for full remote monitoring of performance and troubleshooting. 5BY5 looks forward to providing continued design and commissioning services for multiple projects at LMH Health.

PROJECT SIZE/COST

$3,400,000 design & construction

LOCATION

Lawrence, KS

PROJECT TIMELINE

Summer 2019 through Spring 2023

ENGAGEMENT

MEP System Engineer,

Commissioning

KEY INDIVIDUALS

Brock Centlivre: PIC

Scott Groshans: PM

FACILITY ADMINISTRATOR

Rick Ballinger, Facilities Director

ARCHITECT

ACI Boland

MECHANICAL CONTRACTOR

P1 Group

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER

STAND