MKK’s Denver Human Services Eastside Building wins ACEC Excellence Award

ACEC Colorado has awarded MKK Consulting Engineers, Inc. (MKK) a 2013 Engineering Excellence Award for Denver Department of Human Services Eastside Building. Stuart Monical, President and CEO of MKK stated, “This project gave us a great opportunity, not only to help repurpose an existing vacant site with a facility that serves the local community, but also provide a facility that is energy conscience as well as net-zero energy ready.”

The Denver Department of Human Services Eastside facility is a new 54,000-sf two-story office building. MKK provided mechanical, plumbing and fire protection consulting services on this LEED-NC Gold project. The high performance mechanical system included paring of a variable refrigerant volume (VRV) system for perimeter heating and cooling with an under floor air distribution (UFAD) system for building ventilation and internal space conditioning. This hybrid mechanical system has an energy modeled savings of 40% beyond ASHRAE 90.1-2004, even with a proposed 12% increase in window area over the project baseline. +

Two innovations—program manager Gafcon’s SharePoint360 project management platform and a new BIM “wall creator” add-on developed by ClarkDietrich Building Systems for use with the Revit BIM platform and construction consultant—show how fabricators and owner’s reps are stepping in to fill the gaps between construction and design that can typically be exposed by working with a 3D model.