Lopez Engineering, Inc.

Client:

The Design Group

Scope Of Work

The Design Group engaged Lopez Engineering (LEI) to inspect, design, and provide construction support for electrical systems on the Eighth (8th) Floor Lovelace Medical Center – Downtown Cardiac Unit remodel.  LEI designed the lighting, power, and special systems for this project.

This 8th floor project, 19,700 ft2, which is related to the 9th floor Cardiac Unit project, which was also designed by LEI, increased the number of patient beds, increased number and area of nurse stations as well as remodeling them, increased number and area of utility rooms, added locker rooms, and brought  the electrical and mechanical systems up to code for two floors.  In order to create room for these remodeling requirements, this project eliminated offices, exam rooms, waiting areas, and exercise rooms.

LEI separated the emergency electrical system into the 3 branches: Life Safety, Critical, and Equipment.  Egress lighting, fire alarm panel, fire dampers, and medical gas alarm panels were connected to the life safety branch.  Patient bed lighting, nurse station lighting, select patient bed receptacles, select nurse station receptacles, and VAV controls were connected to the critical branch.  Remaining loads were connected to normal power panels.  HVAC loads, VAV box controls, were connected to the Critical Branch because they were small.  Project replaced all lighting and labeled receptacle and toggle switch stainless steel covers with branch circuit.

Obsolete normal power distribution panels, 480Y/277V, 3P, 4W were replaced with new panels.  The fire alarm system was replaced with an addressable system including chimes, strobes, pullstations, smoke detectors, and panels.  The old Fischer Berkeley Nurse Call System was replaced with a Hill-Rom Nurse Call system using Cat 5 plenum rated cable and cable trays to interconnect system components  New telephone and network data lines, 4 pair telephone plenum rated cable, were extended to patient rooms from the telephone closet using cable trays and conduit.  Telemetry antennas were placed on the ceiling every 30’ along the corridors and connected a central station provided by the hospital using Cat 5 plenum rated cable in cable trays.