Virginia Tech Creativity and Innovation District

Virginia Tech is thrilled to open their new Creativity and Innovation District (CID) residence hall for almost 600 Hokies. Unlike a typical college dorm, CID will focus on three Living-Learning communities. LLCs combine a student’s academics with extracurricular opportunities within the building, which of course, is also their home. Students become totally immersed in a community of like-minded individuals in pursuit of similar Virginia Tech degrees.

CID will feature three unique LLCs eager to take advantage of the building’s theater, research areas, creative lounges, performance studios and creator spaces. The ultra-modern building, covered in traditional gray Hokie Stone dolomite, and cold-formed metal framing, focused on using environmentally friendly systems to operate. Ensuring Virginia Tech CID opened as envisioned meant developing good partnerships, relationships and communication at every level. Southern Air earned the bid from general contractor W.M. Jordan as the project’s design/assist partner for HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems for the 232,000 square-foot new dormitory. Virginia Tech’s CID is the single largest design/assist MEP contract in our company’s storied 75-year history.

Southern Air and W.M. Jordan pre-construction teams joined early in the process to review pricing, critique design and discuss constructability. Southern Air’s pre-construction and engineering teams bridged design gaps and coordinated systems in the building. Our building information model (BIM) drawings became the reference for the drawings submitted to Virginia Tech.

“We are a design/build contractor. We say that; our competition says that. The difference is our competition doesn’t have seven Professional Engineers working for them,” says Ben Wilkinson, Southern Air Vice President of Business Development. “W.M. Jordan saw Southern Air as a partner to drive value by understanding what is feasible, what is cost effective, and what works as part of the design/assist. Virginia Tech’s CID proves Southern Air can excel in multi-year projects, encompassing multiple building systems of any size and complexity. We have the ability to congruently design, or assist in the design of the work, manage the work and perform the work.”

Controlling the indoor air climate and quality for a building this size meant expertly installing a considerable amount of equipment across the three-winged structure. Our field mechanics installed almost 350 fan coil units, five dedicated outdoor air units, three variable air volume air handlers and an energy recovery air handler. Instead of dedicated chillers or boilers, CID can pull up to 400 tons of cooling and steam from Virginia Tech’s chilled water and steam loops. Plumbing mechanics installed steam-to-water heaters, nearly 700 sinks, toilets, showers and other fixtures along with miles of piping in the walls and underground. Siemens provided CID’s buildings automation systems (BAS), which were wired and programmed by Southern Air’s BAS department.

There were several systems Southern Air’s electrical teams were responsible to design and install. The building required a 3000 amp service run through a single switchgear, a 350 kVA generator, and more fixtures than you can count! The other systems Southern Air electricians included the fire alarms, communications, access controls to the building, provided raceway for their distributed antenna system and ran conduit for the camera security system.

Southern Air’s Fabrication Division played a vital part of the construction of this building and the lessons learned at CID will help them be an even bigger part of large projects moving forward. The fab shop made thousands of feet of custom duct, bent raceway and specialty items, which sped up production on site. The “Fab Shop” excels in producing field products from sketches and saving the company hours of field installation time.  

While schedule, timing and demands always present a challenge, providing a finished product, on time during the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant obstacle to overcome. Like many other businesses, we dealt with daily manpower challenges related to the deadly virus. We experienced people concerned to leave home, quarantined for close-contact and unexpected job site closures for decontamination/cleansing. Acquiring material promptly also provided difficulties due to market conditions. Even with pandemic and economic challenges, Southern Air turned the building over to the school for residency this fall as planned years before the pandemic.

Playing such an involved role in the construction of Virginia Tech’s Creativity and Innovation District was monuments for Southern Air. The project tested the limits of our tradespeople and pushed them to be their best. Great craftsmanship is how to achieve great results. Virginia Tech’s CID is a great result and a building the university will use to showcase their campus for years to come.

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