Atlas

Category Project Owner General Contractor Architects Engineer Civil Engineer Submitted By Ludvik Electric Co.

ATLAS CENTER AT “THE CENTER OF IT ALL”

The construction of highly technical facilities is becoming more common every day. Building this type of project in the middle of a major college campus surrounded by three buildings and the three busiest campus walkways increases the challenge dramatically.

How do you install over 40 miles of conduit and over 200 miles of wire and cable in a 66,000 square foot facility designed for today and tomorrow’s technologies?  Ludvik Electric met the challenge through extensive coordination with other trades, careful and meticulous pre-planning and through detailed scheduling. The building consists of two levels below grade, three stories above grade, a mechanical penthouse and a unique tower at the Northeast corner of the roof. The interior has a two-story “black box” performance studio with video and audio control booths, dressing rooms, a production studio, four computer classrooms, a 150 seat auditorium and a 75 seat film screening room, along with offices and meeting rooms, all designed for both University and community events.   The performance studio alone has 400 individually dimmed circuits. The building has 63 different types of lighting fixtures to meet the various requirements of the specialized spaces.

The ATLAS Center at the heart of the University of Colorado in Boulder may well become the focal point of the campus. ATLAS is an acronym for The Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society. ATLAS is described on the University of Colorado website as “a campus-wide program that integrates information technology with all disciplines, people and communities”. Because the functions of this facility interface with every discipline on the campus, the University anticipates that every student graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder will use this building during their educational experience.

Several construction elements including exposed ceilings, two story studios, limited ceiling space, acoustical floors, walls and ceilings, and extensive duct work made craft coordination a necessity. CAD drawings and many meetings, months prior to installation, saved time and money during the construction process. Through careful review of the construction documents and the above listed constructability issues, Ludvik Electric decided at the beginning of the project that major feeder conduits would have to run through the crawl space in order to fit all of the trade’s components through some extremely congested spaces. Ludvik Electric installed over 10,000’ of feeder conduit in the crawl space before the lowest level was installed. This allowed the work to be performed earlier in the schedule and also reduced “confined space” safety concerns.

Detailed installation plans, created by Ludvik Electric, had to be carefully coordinated since the building has a wide variety of floor and wall thicknesses. Various floors had either acoustical treatment or raised levels for seating. Many walls had two or three layers of drywall and different thicknesses of acoustical panels. Due to the diverse types of walls, this project required many more different types of electrical boxes than the typical project so that the final product would be flush with the architectural finishes. A quality control plan was put into place so that on site supervision and a Ludvik Electric Quality Control Inspector constantly checked the installation against current documents to minimize errors and insure that the right material and components, including the correct box, was installed for each application.

At the Northeast corner of the building, a tower rises above the roof starting in the typical Colorado University stonework and then continuing in glass. Inside the glass, there are strips of special glass that refract the sunlight during the daylight hours. There is also an inverted pyramid of stainless steel mesh that appears to be solid from the ground. This pyramid will reflect light from four special LED light fixtures at night. These fixtures can project over 1800 different colors, all controlled by a computer inside the facility. There are also provisions to project images onto the four sides of the pyramid from special projectors. Provisions have been made at the tower to allow for other unique visual effects in the future. This tower is visible from much of the campus including the Folsom Stadium.

Safety of the workers and the people around the site was a primary concern. Ludvik Electric addressed these concerns through a review of the construction process between the Supervisors and the Corporate Safety Director, by weekly tool box talks with all on site employees, by daily reminders of possible hazards in work areas at the beginning of each day and by attendance of all Ludvik Electric employees at the General Contractor’s monthly safety meetings. Ludvik’s stringent safety policies and practices was confirmed a success, throughout this 17-month project, with a result of no lost time accidents.

The location of the ATLAS facility, at the center of the campus, with it’s unique eye-catching tower is fitting since it will be involved in all aspects of the University experience and will also extend it’s influence to the surrounding community through distance learning, video conferencing and through preparing students for future technology advances in learning and media. Electrically, through careful planning and coordination, Ludvik Electric has built a facility that is ready for today’s and tomorrow’s technologies, a facility at the center of it all.