T. Rowe Price Corporate Campus, Owings Mills - SVA Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing Engineers

SVA provided mechanical/electrical/plumbing (M/E/P) feasibility study services for the evaluation of expansion of the existing Montgomery County Public Schools Main Data Center. The data center serves the Montgomery County Public Schools Central Offices, as well as each of the elementary, middle and high schools within the Montgomery County Public School system. The existing data center occupies 2600 gross square feet in the Carver Education Center in Rockville Maryland. The feasibility study was required as the data center as it existed was too small for the projected growth and the school system printing functions were located within the data center.

The feasibility study included review of four potential options for data center expansion: Option One - Construction of a new building for the data center; Option Two - Relocation of the data center to a leased facility; Option Three - Expansion of the data center within the existing building; Option Four - Separation of the printing and data functions. In addition, newly purchased equipment, such as air cooled environmental control units and UPSs were factored into the evaluation of each option. The feasibility study also included the M/E/P evaluation for redundancy and reliability and risk analysis for potential failures during renovation, upgrade and/or phasing.

M/E/P services included review of HVAC, plumbing, power distribution and fire protection (including both wet pipe sprinklers and gaseous fire suppression systems), computer power, UPS systems and back-up generator power and power distribution within the computer facility.

During course of the feasibility study, weekly meetings were held with the Montgomery County Public Schools Construction, Data Center Operations and Information Technology Departments to review existing computer systems, planned system upgrades and the existing computer room infrastructure. Following the initial series of meetings, the information gathered was tabulated and power and HVAC requirements were determined. This then allowed the spatial requirements for the M/E/P infrastructure to be determined and factored into the overall plan by the architect. SVA worked with the project architect to review potential room layouts and allow proper space for the M/E/P infrastructure equipment and evaluate potential room layouts for each of the computer room options.

Following development of the various room options additional meetings were held with the Montgomery County public schools information technology department to review the potential layouts make adjustments as needed and confirm overall space requirements. At this point each of the four options was developed in sufficient detail to allow pricing by the project cost consultant. All of the information gathered was brought together in a report format which included schematic drawings, computer equipment schedules, and data on recommended HVAC and power distribution systems.