It’s essentially a high-performance facility manager’s state-of-the-art wish list: A facility management system (FMS) electronically advises on everything from relative humidity to tracked energy usage for powering auxiliary lighting. FMS-generated emails let occupants know when atmospheric conditions are favorable enough to open the bay of windows for fresh outdoor air intake. Two “nose” devices, one on the west and one on the east side of the office, use aspirators to continually draw in air and analyze its quality. (These “noses” detect concentration levels of CO2 and some 30 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including formaldehyde, ammonia, chlorides, benzene and others.) Then, based on the concentration levels of these compounds (ppm for CO2, an aggregate percentage for the 30 VOCs), the facility’s HVAC system automatically regulates the amount of fresh air introduced into the building, keeping the indoor environment pristine. And, underfloor service distribution allows quick, on-the-fly plug and play configurations for modular power wiring, cabling and air components, providing complete flexibility. Welcome to the Bick Group’s i-Building.

In April 2008, I attended a media tour of the Bick Group’s LEED Gold headquarters facility, the i-Building, in St. Louis. Tate Access Floors (www.tateaccessfloors.com), a manufacturer of raised floor/underfloor air distribution (UFAD) access floors was an integral part of the space’s redesign, as well as a key component of the building achieving LEED certification. As part of the tour, the group met with Tate Access Floors General Manager, Ralph Mannion; Tate Access Floors Marketing Manager, Scott Alwine; Bick Group Executive Vice President, Frank Bick; and Bick Group Senior Vice President, Rick Tinucci, for overview presentations on Bick Group and Tate’s sustainable initiatives, which were followed by a guided tour of the Bick Group Headquarters’ intelligent building.

Bick Group Executive Vice President Frank Bick explains the benefits of the Tate access flooring, which allows for efficient management of PC and phone cable wiring, as well as underfloor air distribution. >> Photos by Joseph H. Mayton III.

i-Building

An intelligent building (i-Building) creates an environment that maximizes the efficiency of the occupants; at the same time it allows effective management of resources with minimum lifetime costs. Per Bick, i-Buildings are designed to accommodate change in a convenient, cost-effective manner. While all intelligent buildings follow a similar concept, Bick Group’s success with being a single-source provider of integrated building systems has been well documented. As identified by Bick, the building challenges faced by both designers and facility managers include:

• Enhancing the quality of work environment;
• Reducing facility operating costs;
• Creating an infrastructure with enough flexibility to easily reconfigure office space;
• Improving the accessibility of voice and data wiring infrastructure to facilitate upgrades to systems; and
• Increasing energy efficiency.

Orginally built in 1967 to house the John Stark Printing Co., the Bick Group ( www.bickgroup.com ) i-Building renovation is 49,183 square feet; 28,863 square feet are dedicated to office and support and 20,320 square feet serve in a warehouse capacity.

Bick Group — specialists in planning and (re)designing mission critical (i.e., data center) facility development — purchased the building in April 2005 and began construction on the i-Building by November of that year. Finishing the project within a seven-month timeframe, Bick moved into its updated facility in June 2006. Total design and construction costs amounted to $5,400,000, which translated to $110 per square foot. Targeting LEED Gold, the project garnered 48 points — 39 is the minimum requirement for certification.

Bick Group Building Controls division is an Authorized Staefa Control System Dealer. As a licensed mechanical and electrical contractor, Bick offers clients a single source for facility environmental needs.

Frank Bick (left) smiles as Bick Group Senior Vice President Rick Tinucci points out the kW used on the FMS Navigation screen in the i-Building network operations center (NOC).

Raised Flooring Raises Indoor Environmental Quality

Tate Access Floors’ ( www.tateaccessfloors.com ) technology furthers the evolution of underfloor air, wiring and data cabling services combined with structural advantages that proffer first-build and long-term value and flexibility. As Marketing Manager Scott Alwine explained, Tate Access Floors has installed more than 450 million square feet of underfloor service distribution/UFAD flooring; the company claims more than 70 percent of the UFAD market share. Tate is also a founding member of the Center for the Built Environment (CBE / www.cbe.berkeley.edu). The realized benefits of the raised system are numerous and include reduction in labor and equipment costs and mechanical materials, to name a few.

“Flexibility is a key theme,” said Tate Access Floors General Manager Ralph Mannion, who also noted that the cleanliness and tightness of the plenum contribute to the overall improvement of indoor environmental quality. Personal comfort control, coupled with indoor air quality (IAQ) attributes, flexibility and quick/easy access allow FMs to make adjustments in house.

“Raised floor systems deliver an unlimited ability to reconfigure data and electrical systems on demand. Underfloor air distribution (UFAD) reduces energy costs, improves indoor air quality, and enhances personal productivity and comfort,” said Mannion.

Occupant Satisfaction

Questions on quantifying improved productivity are admittedly hard to measure, but these days Bick is “doing more work with less people,” said Tinucci. “We are really getting a sense for how people like to use the space.”

The FMS Dashboard is the heart of the network operations center (NOC) — every employee has access to this. The i-Building facility management system provides detailed output of CO2, IAQ, VOCs; the system is sensitive and can measure up to 30 different compounds. According to Tinucci, the i-Building ensures that the Bick Group meets its three main goals:

1. Providing a better space for employees, with plenty of daylight, views to the outside and functional, flexible features that enhance employee productivity and satisfaction.

2. Recognizing energy savings and life-cycle cost savings via the i-Building’s best practices, which equates to a better bottom line for the company.

3. And, last but not least, LEED Gold certification. Bick views achieving LEED certification as an affirmation that the building it envisioned as green is also formally recognized as such.

Through diverse and sustainable strategies such as: daylighting, operable windows, air quality monitoring, rooftop monitoring, water efficiency, facility recycling initiatives, and the use of environmentally preferable, low-VOC building materials and furnishings, Bick Group has created an optimal environment to support its business model as well as its employees. And, in the grander scheme of things, this occupant satisfaction will surely pay off immensely.

Facility Overview

Site: Bick Group i-Building Headquarters

Location: St. Louis

Size: 49,183 square feet

Certification: LEED Gold

Materials & Resources

Flooring: GrateDesign rigid grate with UltraSorb tread by Arden Architectural Specialties, Inc.; Floor diffusers & underfloor perimeter VAV boxes by Price; PosiTile Carpeting by Shaw; Raised access flooring by Tate Access Floors; Marmoleum by Forbo; nora Rubber Flooring; Terrazzo finish factory-applied by Tate to access floor panels in lobby by Florazzo; recycled rubber floor by EcoSurfaces Commercial Flooring

Building Controls: Niagara open-communication protocol, web-based application controller for energy managmenet and building automation systems by Tridium; Talon by Siemens; LONWorks Lighting control panels by Douglas; NovusEdge access management and security; BACnet network interface HVAC controls by York

HVAC: 55 ton, R-407C Packaged Rooftop AC Unit by York; Infrared gas-fired warehouse heaters by RE-Verber-Ray; Condensing, gas-fired boiler for hydronic heat loop for perimeter heating by Pulse Pak

Exterior Glazings/Windows: Solarban60 exterior glass by PPG; Curtainwall system on all exterior windows and horizontal exterior sunshades and interior light sheves by Kawneer

Lighting: Philips; GE; Sylvania; Recessed fiber optic downlight by Fiberstar EFO system; Lithonia; Speclight; Lightolier; LSI; Louis Poulsen; WE-EF Lighting USA; Gardco Focal Point; Peerless; Visa; Delray (Total fixture count in facility = 543)

Plumbing: Tankless electric water heaters by Powerstream; urinals by Falcon Waterfree Technologies; Express Lavatory Systems by Bradley; Low-flow shower head by Moen; Uppercut Dual-Flush Flushometer by Sloan