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The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s (SFPUC) new 13-floor headquarters building is located at 525 Golden Gate, a half block from the San Francisco City Hall at the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center district.
The SFPUC, which provides water, wastewater treatment, and power generation services to San Francisco and the Bay Area, chose to rethink the city's original sustainability goals in favor of more aggressive targets. The agency asked for a revised design incorporating onsite renewable power, a wastewater-reclamation system, and other sustainable features.
Having achieved LEED Platinum certification, the finished building significantly reduces energy and water consumption and provides a healthy work environment with high interior air quality and ample natural daylight. Photovoltaic panels on the roof and building-integrated wind turbines provide onsite power generation.
“The project goal of a highly sustainable building required integration of architecture and engineering to an extreme level. This was only possible through tight design and construction collaboration with the architects, other project consultants, and contractors over the last 7 years. ”
Todd Ravenscroft
Arup’s sustainability consulting services included assessment, overall building energy modeling, and analysis of the preliminary energy transfer of the façade. We carefully studied the building’s envelope performance interface and integration with the mechanical system's design.
We also worked with the SFPUC’s IT department to align its equipment strategies with the sustainability goals. Individual servers and systems were evaluated alongside virtualization strategies, equipment refresh cycles, and cloud-based opportunities. Savings gained from energy-efficient equipment were weighed against increased demand, and systems which could be be migrated offsite were identified for removal from the in-building data center.
In total, Arup provided mechanical and electrical engineering, along with acoustic, sustainability, fire/life safety, and IT and communications consulting.