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

SVA provided M/E/P design and construction administration services for a corporate data center and support areas for use as a central data center for Constellation Energy, the corporate parent of Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE). This project involved renovation of the top two (2) floors of the existing six (6) story building, totaling 33,400 gross square feet in an existing BGE warehouse in downtown Baltimore City. The fifth floor serves as the data center with mechanical/electrical support services, Network Operations Center (NOC), Security Operations Center (SOC). Storage and employee support areas are located on the sixth floor. M/E/P design is for a tier IV Data Center. The data center is provided with a 24” deep raised computer floor system throughout.

The electrical system consists of dual Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) feeders from two (2) independent sub-stations, 3000 ampere automatic main-tie-main draw-out switchboard, independent 1,500 kVA UPS systems, power distribution units (PDU) with static transfer switches for single source equipment and remote distribution center (RDC). Utilities are supported with back-up roof mounted 1,250 watt diesel generator. The power distribution system also includes connection provisions for a backup and/or parallel portable generator at grade. The electrical distribution is supported by two (2) separate fully redundant electrical rooms to ensure complete power reliability.

The mechanical systems consist of seventeen nominal 20 ton air cooled down flow environmental control units serving the Data Center and Staging Area. These HVAC units provide redundant capacity in the event of failure of individual components. The indoor components were located on the raised floor in a hot aisle/cold aisle configuration. Six nominal 20 ton air cooled up flow environmental control units were utilized in the redundant Main Electric Rooms to provide the proper space conditions for the electrical equipment. The support areas were conditioned by a natural gas fired heating/direct expansion cooling variable air volume rooftop air handling unit. Distribution from the variable air volume unit included both fan powered parallel and cooling only terminal units. The rooftop unit was backed up by an air cooled split system for redundant air conditioning capabilities for the Network Operation Center (NOC).

The roof mounted emergency generator is supplied by a fuel oil system including a grade mounted fire rated concrete fuel oil storage tank with fuel oil transfer pumps to transfer the fuel to the generator’s skid mounted tank. The system also includes a packaged monitoring and conditioning package to circulate the fuel oil within the tank to continuously filter and move the fuel to prevent gelling during cold weather.

Plumbing includes the addition of two toilet rooms, domestic water for the environmental control unit humidifiers and reworking of the roof storm water drainage system to minimize potential leakage within the Data Center and support areas. This included the provision of drain pans under the storm water piping in all critical areas.

The fire suppression and protection system throughout consisted of multiple double/pre-action systems to eliminate standing water in the piping systems in the Data Center and all support areas. No wet pipe systems were included in the design. Design for an FM-200 fire suppression system was provided along with a high sensitivity smoke detection system.

Coordination with the structural engineer was critical as the building was originally a warehouse and the floor slabs and roof had extensive rebar. Limited areas were available for the multiple refrigerant and plumbing pipes and electrical conduits to penetrate the existing floor slabs.