 Your host Susan Barger from the FAAIC, go ahead Susan. Hi everyone, it's nice to have you here. We're not doing, we're doing this webinar and we're doing one in August and we're doing a course this summer. So we won't see as much of you as we normally do in the summer. But I'll just quickly go through my usual slides. The very best way to keep, oh, well, I'm sorry, I'm lying to you. And with that, if you have questions, you should check into the Connecting to Collections Care Community. And that is also now where we send out announcements. We no longer have the lists here. So I don't want you to do that. Also, you can check on Twitter and Facebook. And if you need to call me or contact me, this is my email address. I'm happy to chat with you or to send you information. Tomorrow we're beginning a course called Making the Most of Your Assessment. And if any of you have had an assessment or people are proposing that you have an assessment and they're telling you that you can make money or get a jumpstart on your collections care by having an assessment and you don't know what to do with it, this is the course for you. So that starts tomorrow. And then towards the end of August, we're going to have a webinar on fires. And I'm very pleased about that because, as you know, I live in the West and we have a lot of fires in the summer and other times. So without further ado, I'm going to turn this over to Jeremy Linden. He's going to give this webinar on HVAC. So here you are, Jeremy. And I will watch for questions and I will make sure they get answered at the end. Any leftover questions, I will send to Jeremy so that he can answer them in writing. And we don't have a handout today, but we will make a handout which I will post with the recordings that will reflect things that come up in the webinar. He thought that it might be more useful to have resources that are pertinent to what we talk about. Okay, Jeremy, go ahead. All right, thanks, Susan. Hopefully everybody can hear me. And thanks a lot for joining us today to go through the webinar for just going through basically HVAC installation, design, renovation, and thinking about how it is that we work with architecture and engineering teams as we're looking primarily to improving collections and environments as we're thinking about what the mechanical systems and the backgrounds of our buildings are. It's a beautiful day here in western New York. If only I could give a webinar outside, life would be a whole heck of a lot better. But thanks everybody for joining in again. It's great to see some familiar names out there in the audience and great to see a bunch of new folks joining in and hopefully we'll go through and cover everything that you're looking for today. But I will put out the brief warning here. This is a pretty big topic and it's something that the more experience that you have with it, the more times that you go through it yourself, the more you realize that there are a lot of different individual things that can happen along the way that in an hour and a half webinar it's a little bit tricky to cover. So we're going to go through kind of the basic principles, just the basic structure of what a renovation project might look like from the mechanical side. And I'm going to preface this by saying I will do my best to get in around that hour and 15 minute mark, give or take, so that we have some good time for questions and discussion. And what I don't cover in terms of questions or discussion today, as Susan said, happy to get to that in terms of answering any additional questions that you send in. And as we're going through this, please do consider think about that, I already have some different angles or ideas of where this might need to go in the future and what other discussion may come out of this. But if there's something in particular that we don't address today that you are really curious about or would like to see another session on in the future, please don't hesitate to put that in the evaluation at the end of today's presentation. So without further ado, just by means of quick introduction, this is the face behind the voice, if you will, for today anyway. My name is Jeremy Linden. I'm the principal owner of Linden Preservation Services here in Brockport, New York. And my background coming at this, and I'm lucky to be able to be here talking with you today, because it's a nice way for me to share some of the experiences that I've had over time. And I've worked both on the collection side as well as on the facility side. I am a former archivist. My focus was on preservation during those years. I worked for eight years as a senior preservation environment specialist at the Image Permanence Institute. And prior to that, prior to my time in cultural heritage, I was actually in the TAC technician for about 15 years. So it's nice to be able to bring all of those experiences together in cultural heritage and think about preservation, think about collections, and think about particularly mechanics, construction projects, buildings, renovation from the perspective of getting to have lived both sides. Being in the position of the collections person who is undergoing a renovation project, but also being in the position of the person who is performing some of that work, who is helping to guide a client through this is what you need to install, this is what you need to build, and why. So to continue on, today's discussion really is thinking about what it is that we get from a renovation project and what it is that we have to think about when we're talking about mechanical renovations in particular. And I will say that I continue talking about renovation, and it is something that I catch myself with. But please keep in mind that this also goes for any new construction as well. So as we're thinking about any construction project, any sort of facilities project, that in this case speaking specifically to mechanical systems and environmental control, our primary goal is all about recognizing the opportunity that we have here, but also making sure that through the process of creation, through the process of design, that at every step of the way we're looking to minimize the risk. Now for folks who aren't maybe familiar or maybe just getting into this topic a little bit, HVAC, which you'll hear me refer to repeatedly, is heating ventilation and air conditioning. It generally has to do with the systems that control the interior environments of our buildings, and that can be either controlling or management depending on how much influence we can exert. But this has to do with things like, you know, from a residential perspective, furnaces, air conditioners, hot water systems, you know, larger cultural institutions when we're talking about cultural heritage settings, it can still be hot water systems. It can be air systems that are designed to heat or to cool or dehumidify or humidify. And if you're curious about those different processes in terms of what the actual mechanical operation looks like, that's not for today's discussion, but that is something that we've done webinars on in the past, and there are certainly some different resources that you can go to to learn a little bit more about that. Now as we're thinking about installation, renovation, and in any regard the mechanical systems that have to do with cultural heritage environments, the first part that we have to walk into it with is recognizing that the needs will vary from institution to institution. One thing that we have to be particularly careful of is that we don't think of mechanical intervention as a panacea for what it is that might be problematic or shall we say challenging about a given preservation environment. We can't go in and throw a mechanical system into every building. There are a number of buildings, especially historic structures, that really don't respond well to different types of mechanical intervention, be it heating your cooling or be it particularly humidification, which can be quite dangerous to a building envelope. So we have to start out from that point of understanding what it is that we're working with and understanding and beginning to go through that critical process of whether or not mechanical intervention is the right step for us or the right approach. It's never a one-size-fits-all solution, and that is something that I think we're learning better as a field over the last few years. When we think about standards and standards and standard conditions or environments, this really came to pass or really came to popularity. Right around the late 80s, mid-1990s give or take, we've talked in the past about this concept of a 70-degree, 50% flat-line environment, and you're going to find more often than not that that really isn't the solution than it isn't what you're looking for from the perspective of what it is that you want to build or create through this mechanical process or through this renovation installation process. So the key is we're always looking for the right-size solution that fits our setting, our collection, our geography, our building, and everything that makes that unique. So the response, what we build, has to be in direct relation to what it is that we understand the meaning. From the perspective of what it is that we might get out of this, the optimism is that we always walk into it and say, you know what, we're going to install in a mechanical system. We are going to go through a renovation project and it's going to cure all of our ails where we're going to be able to go through and say, okay, now I can protect against mold. Now I can slow down the rate of chemical decay. Now I can create a better, more appropriate preservation environment for my collection, but there's a risk that's involved with this as well. And if you're not careful going through the design process, going through the renovation process and working with your design team, there is a very real possibility that you can also create long-term problems throughout this idea, throughout this process, especially if members of the team have the wrong idea of what the end goals are, or if there's any lack or miscommunication during that design and during that review process. These are our opportunities to make sure that we are educating one another. And again, the goal is to avoid creating a long-term headache. I'll be honest and say that I've walked into a number of institutions over the years where the job, the conversation that we're having, is actually looking at a mechanical system that maybe was only installed five, seven, maybe 10 years ago. Things that should have been a solution for the organization, should have been a solution for the collection, and instead have become an ongoing headache or become an ongoing complication. And that is something that we want to try to avoid through this. So, our goal for today, understanding the mechanical design process so that we can maximize, and you'll see this pop up occasionally, and it's a big part of what I do, so we can maximize both preservation and sustainability while we're minimizing the potential for suboptimal or incorrect operation. So it's about understanding what it is that we want from the outset, and using this design process, using this conversation with architects, engineers to do our best to avoid creating or avoid installing a situation or installing equipment that doesn't match our needs or that doesn't give us the full amount of flexibility that we would really like to be. So, today you're going to try to hopefully catch as we go through, and I'll call these out where I can, and if I don't, keep me honest as we go through. But one of the things you'll see is that we want to discuss what the concepts are or what the keys are to a successful HVAC design project. It's thinking about the process of step by step. What is it that we need to bring in? What groups of people do we need to be talking with? And how is it that we need to structure this? And structure is a really important thing. How is it that we need to structure this practice, this process, so that we decrease the likelihood of missing things along the way? How do we know what to ask for, and how it is that we ask for it? Now, there's some of this in terms of actually selecting what you want your program requirements or what you want your design conditions to be. I can't get into a lot of detail with that today. It's kind of a more in-depth process of thinking specifically about your unique situations, about the building, about the environment, about the collection, and what it is that we want to achieve. But when we're talking about just the communication process, how do we put these concepts forward? When we know as an institution or an organization that we want to achieve a particular preservation environment with kind of a general type of equipment that we're comfortable with, and we need it to operate in a certain way or we have ideas about how we would like the system in the building to function or sustainability for preservation. Maybe there are extenuating circumstances like off-hours occupancy or events or something like that that we need to consider. How do we go about communicating that information to a design team? And not only what are the details that are required, but what does that communication look like? What is that conversation going to be? And how do we support what it is we're asking for so that our partners around the table understand why this is significant? Are there various tools or strategies that we can use for that communication? And we're going to discuss a couple of those as we go through today. There are some really key ones that I think we as a field have all appreciated over the years. Different organizations have put a lot of effort into developing various tools and various guidelines. And we'll go to some of the primary of the major ones today and think about how it is that those play into the process. And finally, as we're looking at that design process and as we're looking at our experience along the way, what are the critical points? What are the junctures throughout this conversation where things might start to go wrong? What is it that we have to pay attention to? How can we predict where the pickups, so to speak, are going to happen throughout this process so that in as much as possible we can try to protect or guard against? So, starting out, guiding principles for the cultural heritage design process. These are just big major ideas that I want you to keep in mind. Now, we didn't do any polls in today's discussion, and that's okay. But I just want you to think about for yourselves right now as we're talking through. As I go through, first of all, have I ever gone through a renovation process? Have I ever gone through a construction, installation, renovation or mechanical systems for environmental performance or even on a whole building scale? But as we're thinking about that renovation, that installation or design process, what are the things that we, on the collection side in particular, and by the way, this also speaks to our facilities partners. Really, think of it as the institution as a whole. But what are the things that we want to have, you know, the classic on-your-computer screen or on-your-monitor post-it note? What are the things that I want to have sitting in front of me that I remember at every step of the way that I make sure that throughout that conversation I keep going back to, am I doing X or am I achieving Y? And guiding principle number one, and this is the biggest one to push, is that we want that design process, we want this design conversation to be integrated. And this is a technical term in the world of architecture and design engineering. The integrated process is really looking at it and saying, instead of the different parties on a project, be that architects, be it engineers, be it mechanical engineers or structural engineers, electrical engineers, envelope specialists, instead of those different groups going off and doing their design work, creating their systems, creating their own drawings, their own plans separately, and then coming together at the end and trying to mesh it all together. An integrated process means that these separate groups, you have multiple subcontractors sitting around the table when we're talking about the design process, that all of these separate groups are going to be sitting there together around the table at the kickoff, that the conversations throughout as we're thinking about the design process at the different stages, different groups are all going to be involved at every juncture. They're going to be able to come into this, and that means that as we're thinking about design and design of various components in a process, whether it's just looking at a mechanical project or whether it's looking at a building project as a whole, it means that things like electricity and mechanical systems for plumbing and mechanics or structural engineering and envelope studies and mechanics are all basing their decisions, they're basing their designs off of one another. They're not creating something separately and trying to squeeze it all together at the end. That this conversation is happening throughout and that everyone's design process is informed by the other people going through the process with them. And it makes the entire design exercise a lot smarter. It means that we have less to do typically at the end of a particular phase in terms of making things mesh together well, making things come together and work well in cohesion. But it also allows us to have and to have specifically to have these learning experiences as we move through. So again, from a typical design side or when we're thinking about who the contractors are that are coming in that you might be working with, oftentimes architects and engineers think about integrated process as including themselves, the different engineering firms, kind of the different trades or the different professions within that design process. And then maybe client representation to a certain degree. But then when we talk about cultural heritage, this is where it becomes particularly critical in terms of thinking about how that integrated design expands. Because now not only is the client participation critical in terms of what it is that the onsite staff or the onsite management or administration is asking of the design team, but cultural heritage as we're thinking about collections preservation, as we're thinking about what it is that the artifacts about what the media need over time, what the degradation risks might be, and what it is that we need to achieve in terms of operation and control. Now there's another subset of individuals that need to be a part of this conversation, that need to be a part of the critical approach or critical discussion around the table. And that's not just collection professionals and I use that term broadly. We talk about everything from curatorial to conservation and preservation. Sometimes exhibits folks. We're using the collections professionals to bring their perspectives and their workflow and understanding of what the day-to-day risks or needs of the collection might be. But we also need to bring in the facility staff. We're the ones that are going to be operating and caring for the system or whatever it is that we're building from on a day-to-day basis. They need to be able to not only understand what it is that is being designed and installed, but also be able to inform that process because they understand what the day-to-day operation is going to look like. Do we have the maintenance budget to be able to take care of a certain type of equipment? Do we have the personnel? If there's a contractor that needs to be brought in for repairs or for regular maintenance, are those contractors available? We don't want to install a system where the closest qualified technician to work on it is four hours away. So all of those things have to come into that discussion in that integrated process. And then in addition, oftentimes what is a helpful stage or what is a helpful addition to that team is the utilization of different consultants from within the cultural heritage field. And that might have to do with cultural heritage preservation. It might have to do with cultural heritage facilities consultants or sustainability consultants because these are the folks who understand critically what the relationship between the collection and the built structure, whether it's the mechanics or whether it's the building, what that relationship and interaction is going to look like. And not just that they understand this to a level of expertise, but also that their perspective is coming from a much broader scope oftentimes than the institutional staff. So they're able to bring examples, experience what has worked, what hasn't worked from other parts of the field from other examples from other institutions. And this is where I'll get just a little bit of a tangent here for a second because I get this. It's a little bit, you know, it's a little dicey. It's always tricky speaking as a consultant and talking about advocating for the participation of consultants in certain projects. So I want to be transparent here and just talk about what it is that they can bring to the table, what it is that they add to the process that maybe would be missing otherwise. So the first part is don't be afraid to go there, but make sure that you identify if you're going to use a consultant, if you're going to use a cultural heritage consultant, make sure that you're identifying what the need is so that you can justify that. And so that there's an ability to understand what their role in the process is going to be. And oftentimes that consultant will really help you go through that process in terms of understanding what it is that they bring to the table, what it is that their role would look like at different junctures or at various points. And what it is that they're going to provide you that may add to the overall understanding of a project or in terms of detail or documentation that wouldn't normally be part of the design process. As I said before, oftentimes one of the biggest things about using a consultant is that they're bringing perspective or expertise from the field outside of the home institution. We're very good oftentimes with our training, with our professional development, with what it is that we may learn higher education. But when we're working a specific job or a singular position within an organization, it's hard to always have, shall we say, a broader understanding or experience of what is happening out in the larger field and how what it is that we do might compare to what another organization or what another institution is doing, whether in a similar setting or in something slightly different. So that's the opportunity for these external thinkers for these external individuals to come in and kind of lend that perspective to the process. Critically, what often happens is that they fill a role or a gap between where the institution itself is sitting and where their engineering or their design team may be sitting. It's a classic kind of trope, if you will, in the field that engineers and collections folks speak two different languages. And it is true. Oftentimes the backgrounds are different. Even oftentimes facilities managers, facilities operators and engineers aren't always speaking the same language because they're looking at the same piece of equipment or the same installation from two different perspectives. One is the building of it, one is the design of it and what it should do. And the other one, the facility side of the organization is looking at it from what it actually does and how we take care of this thing from day to day. So when you're using a facility's consultant or when you're using a cultural heritage consultant, those folks, if you're using the right folks, can oftentimes serve as a translator or as an interpreter between the cultural institution and their needs. And what it is that the engineering, the architecture firm is looking to design and to create. So when there needs to be explanation in terms of how it is that preservation and physics interact with one another, how it is that certain building constructions or mechanical system operations might impact preservation and might impact workflow or sustainability measures. That's the gap oftentimes that a consultant can fill where the institution staff may not be fully conversant in what it is and how to explain that to a particularly design team. But the engineering team and the architects also oftentimes are not experienced or not well-versed in collections preservation or in the day-to-day operation or in the heritage organization. And worst comes the worst. Oftentimes this is sadly not... it does happen from time to time. But there is also the role of a mediator in here. It's the role of when there is a disagreement in terms of what is critical and what it is that needs to be done. Oftentimes that person can sit in that safe space in between and try to boil down the different points of the different arguments to help bring it back to some sort of resolution, whether it's compromise or something that has to be made in one direction or another. But it allows you to have that person who understands both sides what it is that both parties within that design process are really experiencing or what it is that they critically need to worry about. Just as a quick note, most of the time when you're using the external consultant, it works best if they're hired by the institution rather than hired by the engineer or rather than hired by the architect. Because what happens is if you're... if you're external consultant, if you're preservation consultant, if you're cultural heritage facilities consultant is hired by the designer, is hired by the architect or the engineer, that person, that firm is beholden to the person that pays the paycheck at the end of the day. They have to follow the architect's rules or the engineer's rules. And more often than not, they serve as a better representative for the institution if they're working directly for the institution and not being held to the design teams or the architect or the engineer's specific processes or specific rules in terms of how it is that they conduct this. And throughout this process, or throughout the talk, we'll talk about different areas where consultants can bring in and kind of lend that external view to the process, particularly in terms of program development, in terms of thinking about reviewing design proposals or design conditions. You'll see a crop up here and there as we go through. All right, guiding principle number two. The collection stays in the foreground. This seems obvious. You know, as we're thinking about it and going, well, it's an HVAC or Building Renovation for a collection space. Be that exhibits, be that storage, be that a workspace, take your pick. But you would be surprised how often that design process, that construction process, turns into conversations about numbers and equipment and the collection somewhere in there gets lost, especially if the collection staff, especially if the institutional staff, are not regularly brought back to the table in that integrated design process or are not regularly part of the table. I shouldn't say brought back to, but are not regularly part of that conversation or part of that process. So as part of integrated design, one of the goals for that in terms of why we need to achieve it is that the institutional staff, particularly collection staff, are the ones who are responsible for making sure that every discussion point, that every decision as we're talking through how that design is going to play out, is being considered in light of the impact on the collection, be that preservation, be that access, be that access and use, be that how it is that the collection exists or what it is that we need to do throughout construction processes. But it is this idea that we need to keep the collection in the foreground. Writing principle number three, plan for the long term. Again, seems plainly obvious, right? But this is like, maybe the headings themselves are not all that helpful because they're too obvious. But looking at it and saying, planning for the long term, sure, we all walk into a new capital project, we all walk into a renovation or design process and go, this is going to fix something and it's going to last a while. But we need to think about what that scale is or what it is that that looks like in reality. Critical key example, a lot of times engineers or designers will come in, talk about installing a system, and if you ask them point blank, they'll say, well, this system is really designed to function for about the next 10 years. Or this system, if it's a little bit larger installation or a little bit larger design, is really expected to function appropriately for 20 years. And I would recommend that right around that 20 to 25-year mark or that 10 to 15-year mark, you start to think about another capital project about replacing this equipment. And then we look at each other in cultural heritage and say, wait a minute, 20 years might be the budgetary cycle for capital improvement for a commercial setting or an office building. But in cultural heritage, the reality is that more often than not, we're looking at cycles that span 30 and sometimes 40 years in terms of our opportunities to go in and replace mechanical equipment or infrastructure within the buildings that house our collections. I'm sure more than a few of you, if I were to actually put this out to an actual show of hands, would say, hey, I'm sitting in a building right now that was built in the late 1960s or the early 1970s, and my mechanical system is still original. I'm still working with the air handler that was installed in 1969 to the capacity that they thought they needed back then, and it is a bear every day not only to get the conditions that we want, but also sometimes just to keep it functional. But we haven't been able to make a change because the money hasn't been there. So when you get the opportunity to go through this capital process, when we get this opportunity to think about it from the perspective of I am making a significant investment, the conversation has to be, how do we look at this design? How do we consider this process recognizing that we may not get another chance to do this for another 25, 30, in some cases 40 years? And I need to think carefully about what that looks like and about making sure that as much as possible we can protect for the tail end of that timeline. Another factor that comes up especially, and I won't go political here, but another factor that comes up regularly is that climate change is really throwing these mechanical designs a curve to put it mildly. I don't know if for anybody who is watching, record setting temperatures in terms of heat in Europe just a couple of weeks ago. And when you look at the percentage of buildings in especially Western and Northern Europe that are equipped with air conditioning, you're looking at 110 degrees in France, Germany when less than 5% of structures in those two countries have ever had air conditioning installed. Traditionally, our environments, our buildings, our construction methods are not well prepared for climate change. And when we're thinking about our design conditions, when we're thinking about looking at new capital investments, part of that conversation has to be that we're not just basing that design off of today's environment, or honestly, and this is where those design models come into play, oftentimes our design criteria or design models are based off of historic data. If that historic data is grossly incorrect based on what our future projections might be, then we are very likely to be undersized on our design or on our equipment capacity from day one. And that is a big conversation to have in the design process of if you look at those design days or those design conditions that are recommended, we want to use those verbatim, or do we want to build in some extra capacity there recognizing that the likelihood of the climate changing, especially in different parts and different areas of the world geographically, is quite significant. How is it that we can protect for that? And finally, document, document, document. You'll hear me talk about this as we get closer to the end. In 25 or 30 years, and again, looking at the folks out there that are sitting in this situation right now, oftentimes one of the challenges is that we don't know why a system was designed a particular way. We don't know what the intent was or what it was that they thought would be in that space sometimes. Oftentimes we don't have adequate or accurate drawings or original design or installation information for various systems or various building portions, let alone entire structures. We're missing operational data in terms of how the system was intended to run or operate initially. So as we go through this process and we think about planning for the long term, at every juncture of the design process, we want to document what it is that we are doing, what those discussions are, what the decisions are that we make, and why we make them. So that 20 years from now, 25 years from now, 30 years from now, when the new staff has come along after we've all moved on to different positions or retired or whatever other great future we have in mind, as those new staff are coming in, they have not gone through this process. They were not part of that critical discussion and they need that resource as well to go back to and say, this is what the intent was and this is how it was supposed to run and now I have to make a critical choice of whether that is still the right operation or whether we now have to make adjustments or make some changes on into the future. All right, let's see here. Learning principle number four. Sustainability isn't just recycling. This is kind of a poke in terms of thinking. When we look at sustainability in organizations, sustainability in cultural heritage, there's been a lot of discussion here lately. I've been fortunate to be a part of a lot of those discussions. There are green activities. There is recycling. There are things like composting. There are different actions that we can take with an institution. There are external actions that we can take as an institution and community. But when we're thinking about HVAC and about mechanical design processes, sustainability has to be an underlying theme throughout that entire process. First of all, our mission as cultural heritage institutions truly is not solely preservation. I realize that missions are a lot broader than that. But when we're thinking about collections, preservation is part of our mission. But sustainability being able to preserve those collections in the long term to create a preservation model and operational model that we are able to sustain and continue is a critical part of the design consideration of that discussion. So we design with a holistic building system in mind from the outside in. We really want to make sure that we're asking the structure to do as much as possible. Systems are not designed to take the outside and completely condition 85 degrees outside of Rochester, New York on July day. The idea is that we try to limit the amount of influence that the exterior environment can have on the interior with the building envelope first, with the building structure first. And then we use that mechanical equipment to trim throughout that process. So again, keep in mind what the role of the system is and how much work you're expected to do. Planned operation for the system should only use as much energy as absolutely necessary to achieve the desired conditions. This is not the talk or not the discussion today to get into optimization or to get into thinking about sustainability strategies. But it is just to say that as you learn more about what sustainable operation looks like or about optimized environmental control, you want to take those facets or those factors into account as we're going through this design process. You want to ask the team up front that, look, I'm thinking about shutdowns or I want to think about limiting outside air or I want to talk about seasonal set points. That design team needs to know that from the outset so that as we're working through the design, the capacity for those sustainable strategies is built in. That plays to this last point. Efficient equipment only gets us so far. You know, you'll talk about an engineer, about a designer coming in, or you'll hear about an engineer coming in and saying, you know, look, this is going to save you a lot of energy right off the top because the piece of machinery that we install is going to be far more efficient than what it is that you have. Great, yes, absolutely. But that's only a relatively minor part of the battle. At the end of the day, the normal operation of a piece of equipment is one thing in terms of how it compares to an older piece of machinery and an older piece of equipment. But what really makes the difference in sustainable operation is how we use it day-to-day and how much work that piece of equipment is expected to perform. And where we can minimize that work is where we really see the lion's share of the sustainability benefit or the sustainability opportunity throughout the long-term process. And finally, speak up. Right, guiding principle number five. Speak up. Don't be afraid. When you get that seat at the table, I know that this is not a part of, this is a whole other discussion, how it is that you get that seat at the table. I'm going to explain why this is becoming more and more regular and why we can now begin to expect it as opposed to just hoping for it. But when you have that seat at the table, don't be afraid to talk. Don't be afraid to add what it is that you're concerned about. Don't be afraid to ask questions along the way. This is an education process and communication is really a two-way street. Not only do we as collections professionals have to be conversant in what it is that the engineering team is presenting to us, right? We want to, in as much as possible, understand what it is that they're proposing to us. But the opposite is also true. We want to make sure that we're taking this opportunity to educate the engineering team, the architecture team, about why it is the preservation is important, about what it is that our collections need, what the risks might be, and how it is that their design is going to help us mitigate some of those concerns. We want to learn through this process. Oftentimes, when I go through this with different institutions, one of the things that I hear from the staff at the end, oftentimes, even before they even talk about, we're so excited to have a new system. Oftentimes, the first word out of the team's mouth is, I learned so much from this process. I was exposed to information that I have never had an opportunity to talk about before, and by asking questions, and by being curious and helping to add information to fill out that process or to kind of push that process forward, what it is that you take away is a much stronger understanding and puts you in such a better position moving forward to help work with that new system, to work with the new design, and to work with facilities and administration partners on how to maintain that operation and maintain that equipment for the long term. Ask questions. Understand what you're asking for and why. So don't just go in with a set of numbers that you heard someone else recommend. It's necessarily, you know, don't just say, I want my environment to be X. Understand why it is that you need that environment. Think about your own collection and where it is that those risks may be and what it is that you want to try and mitigate or fix for, you know, improve throughout the design of the renovation process. And this is a critical point. Use those external analysts. Use those consultants to bridge that communication gap where necessary. You know, if you don't always under... You think you know what you need, but you're not sure why or you really need someone to work with you in terms of how to think about preservation environments for a specific media type or how to think about preservation environments as a building as a whole. Don't be afraid to reach out and work with colleagues in the broader field so that they can help bring that conversation to the table and allow for that communication process between the design team and between the institutional team. You know, again, communication is such a huge part of this that it's hard to give it any short drift at all. Resources to help along the way. Just a couple that we're going to address you today. And I really want to preface this by saying that, sadly, this is not an area of where we just have all the resources in the world that we would love to have waiting at our fingertips in terms of how to go through mechanical design processes, renovation processes, installation processes, construction, as it pertains to the cultural heritage. You know, there are bits and pieces and parts of it that we've discussed over the years or that we have publications or real critical assessment of or critical analysis of. But this is an area where I think we as a profession really do need to grow and continue making this information available because there's not one go-to source as the be-all and end-all of this is how you go through a designer installation renovation process. One of the best new resources that is out there is actually coming from ASHRAE, which is the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers. Every four years, ASHRAE publishes what it calls its applications handbook. And this year in 2019, the newly edited or the, shall we say, the newly rewritten Chapter 24, which is Museums, Galleries, Archives, and Libraries came out. We actually just finished writing this last year in 2018. June 2019 is the first publication, so it's hot off the press, so to speak. This chapter is designed specifically for mechanical engineers, mechanical contractors to have a resource that they can go to that provides them with guidelines that when they're working with a cultural heritage institution, how should I think about doing this? What is it that I go through, what is the process? What are the design conditions? What are the types of equipment that I should use? Who do I need to talk to? How do I go through a mechanical design process for a cultural heritage organization? And as much as possible, we tried to squeeze that information into about 90 pages every day. So it's a great resource to start in, but remember that it is written primarily for the engineer. It's written primarily for the HVAC contractor. Nonetheless, there's a lot of good information that collections or facilities professionals can take out of this in terms of content. Just as a heads up, this is sadly only available for purchase through ASHRAE at ashrae.org. But that being said, if you work in an academic library or if you're in an area with a larger public library organization, this is oftentimes very easily available through different databases. So if you don't want to go on and pay the money to purchase the chapter from ASHRAE, look around at a local university. Look around at your local public library or think about what your academic partners might be for your institution. And see if you can find access to this content through those other needs. By all means, go use your library. I just looked that in. Just so you know, while this was written for the engineering profession for the engineering field, the people who wrote it by and large really weren't engineers. Most of us sitting around the table were preservation experts, conservation scientists. There were a couple of engineers at the table and a few mechanical industry professionals. But when you're looking at a lot of the input into this chapter, aim from cultural heritage. The majority of the folks who were in on these calls and in on this writing, we all work with cultural heritage as our primary roller, our primary job. It wasn't just a design engineer coming in and saying, this is how I think you should build it. So, you know, recognize that this is written by cultural heritage by and large or the engineering profession. And I think that does two things. Not only does it really kind of do a good job of focusing on what the critical factors are from a cultural heritage perspective, but I think it also makes it more approachable to those of us who work regularly in the cultural heritage field. Moving forward just as a little bit of detail, there are a lot of updates to this 2019 edition. And the critical ones, the most significant ones just running through, this includes a detailed decision-making process for design projects. It's kind of a flowchart of how the process works. It's not exactly, you know, it's not exactly how it is that the actual interaction necessarily happens with an individual engineer and an individual design team, but it's meant to point out where those decision-making points are and how it is that they relate to one another and how you might flow from one topic or one concept to another. It does include new environmental guidelines for design, especially for temperature-relative humidity pollutants that are based on updated material science for a broad range of materials. Again, these are guidelines. These are not gospel by any means. You have to look at them critically and think carefully about what is appropriate for your own collection. There's guidance on building envelope design and building envelope capacity. It's based largely on geography and the necessary interior environment that we want to achieve. So if you want a cold storage environment that is controlling relative humidity between a band of 30% and 60%, then this section is meant to give you some guidance in terms of structurally. What it is that your building envelope has to do or should be doing in order to minimize the work the mechanical system needs to do. There are new controls design guidelines that incorporate both preservation and sustainable operation. This is something that was entirely missing from previous versions of this chapter. So now it's added in to talk about not just what equipment you want to use and what the environmental set points might be, but on a day-to-day basis, how is it that we should plan for this thing to run? How much outside air do we want to think about using? What should scheduling look like? And where is it that we want to control from in terms of sensors, dehumidification? And finally, there's updated guidance on equipment selection. And this is something that is, you know, it's funny because some things remain the same. They're tried and true classic technologies out there that we've been using for 30 years. But as we look at it as a field, both on the engineering and the cultural heritage side, there's a lot of new information or a lot of new equipment that comes up regularly. And this largely accounts for that. Another resource or another sort of family of resources, if you will, is from the Image Permanence Institutes. A number of you may know that IPI has been involved in this field for a number of years. You know, I love my time there, and they do a lot of great work. So the guide to sustainable preservation practices for managing storage environments is a written publication that's available for purchase through the Image Permanence Institute. And it really is focusing primarily, both of these are focusing primarily on the existing built environments, on the existing mechanical systems in their operation. But if you read through them, I think you'll recognize that the information that is being provided really can go a long way towards informing this design process, informing what it is that we think about, what it is that we think we want to build moving forward. Because if we know that we want to be able to control outside air to a varying degree, we want to be able to control fan speeds or if we want to be able to achieve seasonal set points, then we understand that we need these resources will help us get some of the language we need in order to communicate that and make sure that that is part of initial design, not just something that we're going back in and working on optimizing 10, 15 years down the road. Here, DuPont calculator. Again, hopefully this is a familiar resource to a number of folks out there. I'm not going to go through and explain the entire thing today. That's not the purpose of today's talk. But the great thing about it is that combines engineering concepts or thermodynamic psychometric concepts in terms of the sliders that you'll see on the left-hand side, temperature, relative humidity, and DuPont with the preservation impact using the preservation metrics developed by IPI. So it's that connection between what is it psychometrically that a given environment creates for us in terms of preservation quality? What is the rate of chemical decay going to be? Is there a risk for mold growth? Or is there a risk for mechanical damage or mechanical expansion contraction? This is an excellent, excellent tool using, sitting around the table with a design team working with architects and engineers to illustrate, as we're thinking and going through that decision-making process of why we want one conditioning, not another, why a certain design criteria is critical for moving forward in the design process, it illustrates the impact, or at least one, shall we say, model of an impact on the collection. Look, this is why 65% relative humidity is not okay. This is why we need humidification so that we don't drop below 30% relative humidity or 35% relative humidity when we're talking about leatherbound or vellumbound books. It's why we have to be careful with things like shales or ivories or something else. So play with this. It's a free resource at dpcop.org. Play with this. Look through, see what the differences are, especially if you're going into a design project. Your initial idea of what it is that you need to create environmentally, pop it in there, and then move those sliders around and see what different conditions give you in terms of environmental benefits or maybe creating risks where you didn't recognize that there might be one. As we're thinking about now, as we have these tools, then help us to communicate, whether it's ASHRAE Chapter 24, whether it's a dewpoint calculator. The design construction process is typically a very... It's not set in stone, but there's a general process that most designers, most engineers and architects will go through. And I'm going to preface this by saying, as we go through here, keep in mind that the way this process physically looks for those sitting around the table is going to vary a little bit based on the size of the institution, based on the size of the project, based on the size of the collection, or based on what it is that you need in terms of environmental control. So for the largest institutions, this design process can look like 15 people sitting around the table discussing all of the various parts that play into this. For a smaller historical society, this might be a one-on-one conversation between the curator and the mechanical contractor that they're bringing in to replace the furnace or an air conditioning. But the principles remain the same. Throughout this process, you're looking to have the same points of communication, the same critical information being passed back and forth. The only thing that is different really is the scale that we're talking about. So when we're talking about design processes and mechanical processes, and project management as a broader concept, and I'm hoping that a number of us or a number of you probably are familiar with basic project management here, your philosophy. What you'll find is that the ASHRAE recommendations, the ASHRAE process in Chapter 24 that is recommended, looks really, really similar to a traditional project management model. And it's nice that we can go through and recognize that because this is something that a lot of engineers or a lot of architects are going to be very familiar with, they're used to the concept or work regularly within a setting of project management. They understand that there is an initiation stage. And for us, that's a context stage. There is a planning stage, which might be pre-design and design. There's an execution stage to any project, and that might look like construction, that there's going to be a monitoring and control or a monitoring stage. And we're looking on our side at that as primarily commissioning and thinking about how it is that the installer, the constructed system actually runs. And finally, closure, where everything gets wrapped up and handed off in terms of finishing the project and moving and ending that initial relationship between the design team and the institution of the client. That's our training and documentation stage. That's where it is that we go through and make sure that all of that information is together before we end that relationship for the sake of the individual project. So keep in mind as we're going through this process that if it takes relating these concepts or relating what it is that we need to do for cultural heritage back to broader project management models, it's entirely possible to do. And sometimes it really helps, especially a broad group of individuals sitting around the table, recognize what all that we're talking about. Where are we in the process? Oh, I got it. I understand what execution is. That's the same thing as construction. No problem. So the initiation are the context stages that's described in NASHRAE. This is where it all starts, right? This is team up, collections and facilities come together, discuss what it is, what our issues are, what our concerns are, what our problems are. This is the first discussion, the first real initiation of where it is that we're going with, gosh, I think we might need to have a new mechanical system. Or I think we might need to build a new building and a new mechanical system as part of that. This phase, this stage is where we are documenting the existing operation and the risks. And that's why that nice little handy picture of a data logger is over there to the left. Environmental monitoring is a big part of this because we need the data. This is a data driven process. This isn't just Mary and Bob coming together and saying we talked about it and we think we need a new mechanical system, let's go talk to the administrator and just tell them, look, the old one's broken, we need a new one. That doesn't always carry the day in terms of why it is that we need to go through renovation or why it is that we need to make that capital investment. You need the documentation, you need the proof, you need the measureability and the data driven facet of this which is to say, look, we can look at environmental monitoring for a collection environment and we see conditions worsening over time. We see challenges, we see degradation, we see risks of degradation that maybe weren't here five years ago or that have been consistent and it's now to the point where we have to do something before we significantly, before we start to see significant impact. So use that data, use environmental monitoring to your ability. This may include external consultants for the analysis and for the assessment phase of this. We're going through what the existing operation is, what the needs might be. In other words, begin to have those discussions of, it is X but we needed to look Y different. We needed to go from this environmental condition to this different environmental condition, improve temperature, improve relative humidity in order to protect against degradation. External consultants may help you go through that process of thinking about what you can do, what is appropriate, what would match well within your own particular setting. In larger settings or larger institutions, this may look like a feasibility study. It may include other formal processes. One of the things to keep in mind and this is something that it applies to a couple of different phases throughout the design process. Funding can be available to work through these projects from a federal perspective, from a state perspective, sometimes from private foundations. One of the key ones that we've been using we've been fortunate now to have it around for nearly a decade is the National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections. They're planning an implementation grant. The planning grants can help us out with this initiation stage as well as the planning stage. The implementation grants can help us with the execution stage or the construction stage. If you're thinking about going through a project, if you're thinking about renovation, installation, if you need something in terms of assistance on the capital side, or assistance to just do the study to determine whether or not it's necessary. Think about whether or not there might be a federal grant program out there from the NEH from the IMLS that might be able to help you through this process. They're amazing resources and really this is something that these funding agencies have put a lot of time into developing a program that can adequately meet the needs of institutions to begin this work, to begin thinking about this process. Planning and pre-design, when we think about what it is that we're doing at these phases, it's all about a definition of needs. It's all about recognizing we have this and we need to turn it into something better. We need to turn it into something else. What is the difference between the environment that we have and the environment that we need at the end of the day? We have to remember, and this is where we talked about specific not just one size doesn't fit all approach, thinking about unique circumstances for different buildings and different collections, we need to keep in mind the realistic capabilities of the building that we're in. We need to know things like zoning. Can we separate the collections from the people? Because that gives us a lot of opportunity in terms of creating better preservation environments if we're not worried about human comfort in that process. And at the end of the day, when we're going through this planning of this pre-design process, the first goal for any institution, for any cultural heritage organization, begin with mitigating risk. Identify what your preservation risks are or what your operational risks are or what your sustainability risks are. Identify what those are and have your first discussion, your first pass at crafting your program requirements, be geared toward fixing those risks. Be geared toward how it is that we remove this situation and make sure that we don't grow mold. Or how is it that we go through and make sure that we can provide the appropriate conditioning for our storage environment without freezing out the staff who are on the same system. Use that approach first and then once you have an initial discussion that seems to mitigate those risks, explore how much further you might be able to take that. And we then make significant improvement to the preservation quality. And we then make significant improvement to our sustainability or our energy consumption by utilizing maybe different design characteristics or different installation methods or equipment. So start with the first and foremost as always, avoid risk control degradation. Try to minimize what it is that is happening that is already bad. And then shoot for hate using the word ideal but this is something that comes up a lot of times, what is your ideal situation? Don't make your ideal the first place you go to. Make sure that you identify how to fix what you have first and then the ideal can be part of the discussion. The pie in the sky can be part of that discussion. That planning, the very early pre-design process of this may or may not include architects or engineers. This may be an internal conversation. This may be a conversation that you have with an external consultant for preservation or cultural heritage facilities. But oftentimes this is a conversation or a discussion that you have before you actually bring the engineer to the table because you want to be on the same page internally before you start asking the engineer or the architect to start designing something for you. The key product at this stage the really big one that you want to walk away with is the program requirements document. So when we talk about or think about program requirements or design parameters this is the I can't stress this enough, this is the singular most important document singular most important resource that you will create throughout the entire design process. This is where you come together and as the institution lay out on paper what your expectations are for this capital improvement project for the mechanical design. What is it and it includes the entire body of collections, facilities, administration sometimes an external consultant. The goal is not to dictate this is not putting down a set of rules necessarily this is a starting point this is putting down the information we want to see this happen and now it becomes a discussion of what aspects of what you're asking for are possible what things may not work for your building or given the physical space that you have for installation or what things might you have to trade off on in terms of we can do this but if you want to do a good job with I don't know it's really hard to think of an example off the top of my head but in terms of thinking about and looking realizing that you can do cold storage maybe the cost of that system is far more than what you actually have the capital money for. So you have to bring that back just a little bit in terms of your design criteria. This is your starting point. And when we think about what goes into it and this could be an entire talk all on its own in terms of what all these considerations are and what you're asking for and what situations. What are the environmental conditions that you want and why? Sometimes it has to do only with preservation sometimes it has to do with the blend of preservation and human occupancy. Sometimes you're choosing environmental conditions or set points based on what your building can structurally handle. There are a lot of different facets to play into that. So you want to ask for this is our design criteria. These are the environmental conditions we want. This is why we think we're limited to this. Now, engineering team, architecture team that we're working with educate us in terms of whether or not all of this is feasible or maybe we're missing an opportunity somewhere in here. If there's something that we don't realize you tell us if we can do it better if there's improvement we can make because I'm teaching you what it is that I need for preservation. Talk about zoning. How many air handlers do you need and which spaces do they serve? If you have the same air handler that serves all of your exhibition and your collection storage and your workspaces and the cafeteria it's probably not such a hot idea in terms of long term operability for preservation. So lay out what you expect that air handler to space relationship to be. We often recommend and you'll see this in the ASHRAE chapter if you read it we recommend that you define between different missions in terms of zoning. So you try to keep storage on its own zone. Exhibitions and workspaces for collections, occupied collection spaces they can go together but the public spaces that have no collections in them, the cafeteria the entryway at classroom those don't go on the same air handlers as the collections. So try to separate and lay this separation out what it is you want to see in this program requirements document. Equipment preferences. Maybe you are a steam campus and you want to utilize steam for heat wherever you can make that known so that the engineer walking in knows that you don't want to see a whole bunch of electric heating coils installed all over the place that you really want to try to figure out the design to utilize the steam that you have readily available so that you're not using more equipment or new equipment or different energy sources. It varies from setting to setting institution to institution but think about what your infrastructure is already and what your facility staff is capable or shall we say comfortable working with so that the designers, the engineers can take that into account. Operational requirements. I have a storage environment we are in the middle of a metro metro location, metro geographic area I don't want to use a lot of outside air I would prefer to use no outside air please design the system to make that possible I don't want an economizer I don't want to use free cooling because I'm worried about pollution or I'm worried about moisture control I need to humidify in my setting even though it might not be typical for what the engineers worked with in the past I need you to install a humidifier so that we can maintain the minimum relative humidity and the discussion may turn out to be well we can do so much for you on outside air but we have to at least provide have a provision to make code or in terms of humidification we can provide it for you but we're worried that the envelope may not be able to hold up to it so now we have to think about envelope improvements or vapor barriers or something like that again this document becomes the heart of the conversation it's where we look at it as the whole team and say this is what we'd like to do is it possible is there an opportunity to do something better or can we only get so far because of this or that circumstance and finally control preferences where it is that you want set where it is that you want set points where it is that you want sensors and how it is that you expect overall systems to run you know again a lot of this is covered in terms of the basic concepts within the Asher chapter that this is really the crafting of that program requirements document this is an exercise in and of itself and frankly this is a conversation in and of itself so moving on for now these are just here as reference I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because you may have heard me talk about these in the past but if you're going back to this talk in the future just want to pause on this slide at some point general temperature safe and risk zones on this slide general relative humidity safe and risk zones on this slide use these general guidelines as a starting point for where you might want your conditions your design conditions or your design environments to be now for specific collections for specific materials you may find yourself moving to one particular set point condition or another you may find yourself wanting to use seasonal set points for various collections types and various our age points so think about through that process these are really just here as again as a resource in this information the kickoff meeting happens this is the first big time where everybody comes around to the same table and the integrated design team gets to meet everybody gets to meet each other face to face the critical components in here team introductions discussion of those program requirements this is where we you know pass out that document and really go through and say from the institutional perspective this is what we want to get out of this this is what we're hoping that y'all will help us with so as we go through that and that's the first chance that everybody kind of gets to look at this and go oh okay this is what we're looking to do and you begin to wrap your head around that process it'll be a walk through the spaces including mechanical rooms that are likely to be affected that might be collection spaces or potential collection spaces the mechanical space or the mechanical room where the physical equipment will be living if you're ripping equipment out and replacing it with new one of the big things that always comes up is what do we have in terms of physical space for equipment and machinery and can we get air for using forced air systems which is quite common in cultural heritage settings can we get air from point A to point B from the mechanical room over to the collection space that we need to sometimes that ductwork is pre-existing sometimes we have to figure out how to install it as part of the project so those space walkthroughs are critical it's everybody's chance to get eyes on of the building and the collection itself you want to go through with the engineering team or the architecture team what their overview of the full design process so what are their different steps that they use do they go through a pre-design process do they go through schematic design development and construction documents when they're doing construction who it is that is serving as the contact point for a construction project is it going to be the engineers is it going to be the architecture, the general what is their commissioning plan are they going to use a third party commissioning agent if they're not planning on commissioning now is the time where you want to request it and it's also the opportunity to review all of those additional business matters this is usually the first step from a full integrated team perspective this is the step that initiates that design process this is where when everybody leaves this table at the end of the day or at the end of the meeting this is where we go out and start to say okay we're going to schedule our times to come back on site to do a little bit further in-depth analysis or in-depth observation assessment of the spaces the physical spaces the equipment you're going to start to see schematic design discussions come out of this this is we start here now let's move forward it's also a really good time to share those resources among the integrated project team so schedule time when you're looking at a kickoff meeting if you have the opportunity whether as a collection staff or facility staff schedule time during that kickoff meeting discussion to talk about things like two point calculator or why it is that you're asking for the specific conditions that you're putting in if you're using chapter chapter 24 for guidance make sure that you talk with the design team and ask if they're familiar with the chapter in general but also if they're familiar now with the new updated chapter from 2019 because the last time the chapter was updated before this 2007 2011 don't remember for short but it's been a while so there's a lot of new information in there make sure that they're aware of that make sure if you want that to be a guiding document make sure that the engineering team the design team is using that as well think about how it is that you're going to work through that process you know get that feeling and really share at that point these are the documents that we've been using internally this is what we would like you to consider as you're moving through the design process because our organizational team our cultural heritage institution team and maybe your external consultant will keep coming back to these concepts will keep coming back to these documents when we're asking questions so we want to make sure that you're familiar with them as well this is the time to bring that to the forefront and to share as much information as possible depending on the different side on the size of the project the engineer the contractor that you're using you might see up to four different phases of a design process typically these are laid out as preliminary design that's just meant to be kind of initial options for broad pricing you're looking at and going well we could sort of do it like this sort of do it like this this one's going to cost twice as much as this one so let's decide which path we want to start to go down when we get to a schematic design process this is based on the design team discussions it's based on the program requirements it's based on those documents that we've shared among one another and the idea behind the schematic is that it is the amalgamation initially of those broad ideas of what we're trying to achieve into kind of a high-level model you know the 30,000 foot view of what it is that we think this thing is going to look like and when we bring that design back to the table that schematic design back to the table it's the opportunity for the team to look at it and go yeah it looks like we're on track or no wait a minute I think we had some misinterpretation or miscommunication here what you've done here actually needs to look like y or x or a or b or c instead so this is your first opportunity to come back at design there should be a review point here you review the schematic design to make sure that the broad picture of what it is that we're trying to build or design is consistent among the entire team that we're all on the same page once schematic is agreed to once everybody looks schematic goes yep looks good so far let's move forward to design development this is where we start to really flesh out what you'll think of as building drawings documentation all the blueprints the different plans schedules that design development is where we take the comments and the feedback from the schematic and the additional information that we've provided as the institution and the design team begins to build the actual design of your solution whether it's going to be a single mechanical system or multiple or whether there's architecture involved in addition to mechanical design throughout that process what we're building to is nearly a full complete set of drawings for the entire project and again there are multiple reviews throughout this stage as well so when we think about where it is that the institution wants the opportunity to review or wants the opportunity to comment on what it is the design team is doing we want to have these laid out in the project's timeline so that at 50 percent 75 percent 90 percent completion ranges based on where the engineer the architect feel they're at but at these different junctures we want the opportunity as the integrated design team to read through make comments ask questions, raise concerns sometimes make corrections on what is being done so far because the earlier that we catch that in the design process the easier it is not only to fix it but also if we don't catch something until the very end of the process instead of going back and reworking and redesigning and moving plans or moving physical equipments in order to accommodate for something so we want to catch any miscommunication, any problem any mistake frankly as early as possible within that design development process now design development depending on the organization you're working with that final design development document that 100 percent design development may be an initial bid set of drawings to start talking with construction agents with contractors who are going to do the system installation so it varies from one engineering firm to another in terms of where it is that they start to share this documentation of these drawings in order to start getting a feel for what actual construction is going to cost now construction documents when we finally get to that stage this is the final set of documents that are meant to be typically the bid set that are put out to contractors so that they can put in a proposal on doing the actual work but this is the final detail for all the construction it can be construction details it can be final equipment specifications oftentimes we will see equipment schedules, equipment specifications in terms of tables be fully populated at this stage so that everyone is crystal clear on what piece of equipment gets installed where and this may also really at the end of the day we are not careful sometimes this finds of being the last set of documents we get is the institution I am going to caution us against that at the end of the day we should have what is referred to as an as built set of drawings in other words the set of drawings that incorporates any changes made during the construction process but that construction document oftentimes when you go back and look at older records might be the quote-unquote final set of drawings that we have from a given project because as built we are generated so be aware of that too we want that construction document to be as accurate as possible for where we are at this stage in the game I mentioned a lot of this as we are going through the other slide and I realize I am running a little bit short on time here so I am going to do the best I can to stay up here design reviews I can't stress just how critical this is to the entire design process this is the opportunity to assess our progress in multiple phases and again utilizing the talents of the entire integrated team so it is the architects and the engineers reading through each other's documentation and making comments and even more critically it is the organization it is the institution itself collection staff should be offering comments or questions facility staff should be offering comments or questions from their perspective administration can offer comments and questions and oftentimes it is very, very very recommended to include an external consultant in this process because when we think about facilities collection staff, administrative staff they may not be used to reading through architectural drawings or mechanical design and being able to comment on this works or that works or we might be missing something here or do these numbers all add up this is where an outside consultant be the commissioning agent, be they a preservation consultant or a facilities consultant for cultural heritage really comes into play in order to serve as that third set of eyes and look at this design process and say all of this adds up or I think there is a bit of a disconnect here some miscommunication. The critical parts or does the design match the program requirements or at least if there are any agreed upon adjustments throughout this process our collections work close going to be affected by the design. Not just the preservation conditions but as we move collections from one space to another those transitions from space to space in terms of environmental conditions make sense are they safe? Does airflow impact storage layout or design? How is it that the mechanical design might impact fire suppression or might impact the electrical installation on a new builder on a full renovation? All of these different systems plumbing electric fire suppression security mechanical structural all of these play together and you really need to focus on it as a team and make sure that everything is coming together as a holistic system and that we're not missing something in terms of this is going to cause a problem for another factor another facet. Again don't be afraid to ask questions why are we making certain choices? Why did we go with this piece of equipment versus this piece of equipment? Throughout that process we talked about difficult points in that design process but asked for at least two chance or at least four chances to review those drawings to review those plans. Typically that's schematic at least two during design development and then the review of the final construction documents. Depending on who you're working with from the engineering firm or depending on the size of the project it may be more or it may be less if you're a smaller institution working with an HVAC contractor that is just putting forth a proposal to replace a furnace or an air conditioning system. And finally again making sure that you're getting that input from all the different facets of your integrated design team. Smaller projects may not go through a full design process but even thinking about it in terms of historical societies or small historic sites if you're working with a contractor to come in and just do a system replacement always always always ask for the specifications or the lingo in the business's cut sheets. Product specifications for the equipment that they intend to use and then ask critically most of these product specifications will be for a family of equipment in other words a certain a certain brand name or a certain piece of equipment from a company but there are multiple models that are sized to different capacity. You want to talk with your contractor exactly which model we're using what's its capacity and why are we choosing that one what was your process to decide what piece of equipment we wanted to put in here. And you want to make sure that you're working with your internal staff or again where necessary external consultants to make sure that what that contractor is proposing is actually going to achieve what you need for your preservation environment or for what it is that you're specifying in your program requirement. More often than not what happens in smaller settings the one that always comes back to haunt us is that we need a certain level of moisture control even if it's limited due to structural capacity but we need a certain level of moisture control and sometimes working with HVAC contractors that are not used to working in cultural heritage they're not always as good at the moisture control side of the design so they may do very well in terms of getting a piece of equipment that does well with temperature control with being able to cool but not necessarily humidify or dehumidify and that's where that critical review of their proposal for equipment comes into play so that you can talk about this may get us the temperature that we need but does it get us the moisture content that we need? Is it capable of controlling for dehumidification and or humidification? That's where a lot of our preservation bang comes into play. So think about it if you're in a smaller institution HVAC contractors are generally very very well-intentioned but especially in smaller settings may not always have experience in cultural heritage or with preservation so use every opportunity you can to speak with other experts or other colleagues in the field to make sure that what it is that they're proposing is actually going to match your needs in terms of program requirements. Execution and construction this is really something that gets a little bit this is now beyond the design phase often times collections kind of organizational staff will step back a little bit at this point the communication may be somewhat less than during the design process but it's still critical because what we need to know is the institutional staff is that as we begin to impact the actual spaces we need to know about things like seasonal timing when are we going to be replacing the system are we going to be without environmental control for a certain period of time and do I want to do that in the heat of summer July August in the dead of winter or would I be better off doing that in a shoulder season like October or maybe April thinking about access and workflow during the construction process the image that you see here this was all new ductwork that was installed so everything when we're going overhead everything below the collection spaces all had to be plastic and contained to avoid dust to avoid any particular that protection of the collection can you get to it how do you protect it in terms of the construction process itself do you have to move the collection we're obviously not talking about that today that's a whole different discussion but do you actually have to relocate the physical collection immediate self in order for it to remain safe during this process all of these are critical discussions during that execution construction and leading up to that construction phase the other part of this and this really has to do with the design side this is the stage where change orders happen value engineering is kind of the dirty word in the business that is being phased out a little bit so as we're thinking about that these changes can be driven by budget or by discoveries during the construction process and when those changes are being proposed the institutional team has to review them the entire integrated design team should review them to talk about what the impact on the collection or on the preservation environment is going to be monitoring and control commissioning takes our different shapes depending on the size of the place or depending on the size of the institution it can happen before or after the closure phase it kind of varies from project to project depending on the time or the length or the type of the project this is something that should be requested at the outset mechanical commissioning by standard practice this is by ASHRAE recommendations should be performed by a third party agents in other words someone other than the engineer who designed the system it should begin at the outset of the project in the standard approach the commissioning agent should be part of the integrated design team from the very outset so that they can serve as quality control or as a reviewer for that design process more often than not you'll see that the practice in real life is that the commissioning agent really gets engaged right about the construction stage and that most of their work is being done after construction is complete they're the ones that are coming into the mechanical system looking at what the design intent was in other words what's down in the actual drawings of the design and forcing the system to move into different modes of operation it might be July but they're going to force the system into a heating mode to see if the system responds appropriately whether or not the heating coil kicks on or the humidifier kicks on or what other operation might be they are testing the system capacity capability but rarely are they doing it in the actual season and rarely are they doing it to see how the system will respond naturally so the hiccups oftentimes of the mechanical commissioning process is that it is simply too short it may only happen over a period of a week or two which doesn't tell you if you're doing in the middle of summer doesn't tell you how the system is actually going to operate in the dead of January or February so keep that in mind as you're going through this process that mechanical commissioning might be forcing the system into different operations but it doesn't tell you how it's going to transition from different operations on a day to day basis the other critical point here is that it really only covers mechanical performance not preservation impact it just covers it to see the design team said it should be able to do X I turn it on, I program it to do X does it do it, yes check good to go it doesn't necessarily say does it give us the result that we want in terms of the space does it give us the result that we want for the collection especially once the collection is brought back into the space or once the other extenuating circumstances are brought about this is where preservation commissioning comes into play this is usually conducted by a preservation environment consultant we're running long time here so I'm going to try and breeze through this real quick it's geared toward assessing the performance of new equipment for both preservation and long term sustainability and it typically extends for 12 to 18 months after construction completion the critical thing to remember here is that designs are models no model performs exactly the way it's supposed to in real life you do the best job that you can in the design you install, you create, you construct you build the system when you turn it on it's almost always going to look slightly different than what you expected and the goal of preservation commissioning is to make sure that the system is operating over throughout four seasons throughout the seasonal patterns of the environment again usually 12 to 18 months to see where it is that the system does what it's supposed to where it is that we might have misinterpreted in terms of the model and the design and what it is that needs adjusted in order to bring that system into its optimal performance for both preservation and for sustainability and this is usually again done with external consultants preservation consultants and independent measurements closure, training and documentation we talked about a lot of this but at the end of the day we need to have as-built drawings we need to have a written sequence of operation we need to understand what the warranties are and what might void that warranty in terms of work moving forward and finally you want to make sure that you have an onsite operators manual not just for facilities but also something that is communicated in such a way that collection staff that broader building staff understand how this system is supposed to work in the setting that it's in for the benefit of the collection posing understanding context again buildings may look different, settings may look different we have to understand what's going on but we recognize that at the end of the day the principles are always going to be the same this process is something that we can apply or reflect back on regardless of the size of the institution in terms of thinking what it is that we need to get out of it what we need in terms of communication and what we want our results to be how it is that we ask for that our new reality is no more magic numbers design in HVAC design is about risk management first and foremost not just a pursuit of ideals we have to figure out the best environmental design for our institution and our collection and optimization, optimal operation starts with integrated design the partnership among the team gives us that holistic understanding of the system need the system operation and what we need for long-term performance and long-term preservation thank you everybody and I am going to say quickly, I am happy to stick around for anyone who is still with me I hope most of you made it through for anyone who is still with me I'm happy to stick around and try to answer some questions for a few minutes Susan is going to tell me how long I'm allowed to stay on or Mike might but if you're able to stick around with me for a minute we'll try to go through some of the questions that have shown up over in the park Susan do you have any guidance on that? I'm going to step in here I'm going to have Jeremy give us written answers to the questions we have thick Mike is telling me we can stay on for 15 more minutes so why don't you go ahead and I'll read you the questions please make sure that you fill out the evaluation they're really helpful okay, oh hi Julia okay okay, so Pat Loico says is it wiser to plan for equipment that you'd like to last for several decades or for equipment that would be adequate while knowing that the technology would offer even better options in a shorter amount of time i.e. planned up solicits wow, good question Pat my experience is this and I think you bring up a really good point because it's hard to look at it and go should we use what we have right now or if we see technology coming down the road as long as I'm interpreting your question correctly do I see technology coming down the road that I think I might want to utilize and where this often times comes up is when we start thinking about renewable technologies or shall we say renewable energy sources and here's what I want to I think here's my response for this the first one is that when the capital money appears sometimes it is a quote-unquote flash in the pan opportunity of the moment situation where it's use it or lose it not always but that is a risk we have to consider so from that perspective always consider whether or not this might be your singular opportunity to make a critical impact and in that regard also recognize that it is sometimes really hard to from that idea of planned obsolescence it is really hard sometimes depending on your institution to walk into one design project and say I am going to plan for this unit to be replaced in seven years in ten years I know I'm selecting a piece of equipment that is either not meant to last or that I don't want to last because I see another technology coming down the road I've seen some organizations do that in the past and sadly in most of those cases what they then realize seven or ten years down the road is that even though they might have planned for obsolescence their administration didn't plan for obsolescence and while they may be ready to replace the equipment or the equipment we need to be replaced because it wasn't intended to last forever the organization is looking at it and going we just gave you funding to replace this thing or to build this thing seven years ago eleven years ago it's not your turn yet you're not going to get that funding again make it last, figure something out so that is a risk there is that what we consider to be planned obsolescence at the day that we are going through the design process looking at it then ten years later the plan is one thing the reality is often times something different especially for cultural heritage the other part of that is if you're looking at this from the perspective of sustainable technologies and this is a two-part answer the first part even before I get into sustainability the first part is cultural heritage is not usually the place at least in my own experience I don't want to sound like an old fuddy duddy here but cultural heritage is not usually the place where we want to start experimenting with new technology more often than not for what we're doing in cultural heritage in terms of the need the ability is a relative term the need for control of environmental conditions we are better off going with tried and true technologies so to speak that our operators, that our local contractors have experience working with and know well what their capacity is and how it is to maintain it on a day to day basis new technology can sometimes be a little bit tricky in those regards depending on what specifically we're talking about but if you're looking from a sustainability sustainable or renewable energy perspective also keep in mind that even older equipment older machinery whether it be a fan whether it be a coil take your pick the air handling equipment itself if you want to switch to renewable energy or to sustain more sustainable technology the air handling equipment itself may not need to be switched over the only thing you may need to switch is really your source of energy so if you're thinking about the electric that powers an electric reheat on an air handler that electric can come from any place it can come from panels on the roof it can come from a wind farm or a localized wind turbine it can come from a number of different settings if you're talking about a cooling coil or talking about anything that is influencing shall we say the sensible heat control in a building the coil in an air handling system doesn't necessarily have to be replaced if you want to make a switch from chiller technology over to geotherm so also think about it in those regards that there are different parts of the infrastructure that make up the whole building system and individual air handlers which is usually what we work with on a collections or sort of a small scale renovation setting individual air handlers may not actually have to be touched instead you may be going back to a building chiller or a steam system boiler systems and looking at it and going is there a more sustainable or renewable energy source that I can use rather than this older piece of equipment based on fossil fuel or that can be ponied up or partnered with this fossil fuel equipment so oftentimes we'll use a grid system I'm going to move this along because we've got eight more minutes Karen Butler-Clary from Denver says can you speak to some specific problems that could arise when the mechanical room with the HVAC equipment is also being used as a collection storage area collection items seem to deep into these areas all too often when museums are pressed for space the Karen the flat out easiest answer to this is that you take the risk of catastrophic damage and you up it exponentially what it comes down to is when we're talking about HVAC equipment there's a significant amount of power in place here sometimes we have gas in terms of fossil fuels we almost always have water whether we're using it to condition through coils or whether we're having it as a byproduct from dehumidification or as part of a humidification system so when we're looking at either collections moving into a mechanical space or sometimes in my experience maybe the more likely that is someone installing an air in a collection space always always always try to avoid it because at the end of the day your risk of catastrophic damage be it from flood be it from fire risk be it from some sort of failure where there is now smoke in the room or a filtration problem that now particularly outside air is being directly ducted into the space all of these are frankly not worth the risk of locating the air in the specific conditions environment they should always be kept always with a firewall in between okay and level in Riverside says in a full system overhaul do you have a preference for a central system with mounting capacity or a network of small HVAC units that feed into a central controller this is and it depends situation it really looks at what your space what your available space in terms of equipment and what the various environments are that you're trying to control throughout the building my preference generally speaking and it can vary from situation to situation is that storage environments are kept separate and on separate air handlers collections use environments or mixed collection and human occupancy environments labs spaces exhibition spaces are on their own set of air handlers sometimes labs are different because of clean room requirements depending on your setting but those are what we know what we call occupied collections environments those can usually be paired up on similar or the same air handlers and then finally the dirty spaces of the building or the non-collection spaces of the building cafeterias workshops loading docks things like that where collections do not typically live we try to put on entirely separate air handlers or entirely separate zones all of those air handlers can still be fed into a central control system a central building management system but the equipment the air pads are all kept separate to avoid cross contamination and to avoid or to be able to control environments specifically the preservation purposes rather than thinking about only occupancy or comfort needs hopefully that will address your question I hope so okay so Angela Yan says or Jan says do you have models, brands, types of dehumidifiers and roof HVAC systems to use in large drafty warehouses with collections that won't freeze up during the summer months not to put too fine a point on it Angela I'm going to be completely honest this is one of the hardest design processes to figure out in terms of thinking about structures primarily with rooftop equipment that are going to give you adequate or appropriate interior environmental control it is possible but the reason that it's hard is that most package systems of which rooftop units are one in the family most package systems from an off-the-shelf warehouse perspective when you buy it it is not designed for moisture control the manufacturers build these things with sensible temperature control in mind in other words they can heat and cool but they're not very good at dehumidifying and dehumidifying and in order to make those package technologies, those package units control moisture effectively you usually have to work with an engineer to do a custom build from the manufacturer so it's not so much about a specific model or brand but more about whatever model or brand you're considering you have to look at the design capacity of that piece of equipment kind of standard from the manufacturer and figure out whether or not that meets your moisture control needs and then work with an engineer or work with the supplier to adjust the design or adjust the equipment that's installed in that package to provide more adequately for moisture control I know there's a lot more to that question but I think that's about as far as I can go at the moment here it's often times a very case specific issue Sister Jean Marie says how do you handle a split system which is non-working, a waiting repair? I run a dehumidifier 24-7 and am able to keep RH around 45 to 48 percent but temperature is 80 to 90 percent or 80 to 90 degrees wow Jean Marie I'm very sorry to hear that you get by as best as you can until you're able to make the repairs the dehumidifier can be a good start I will try to include in the handout a resource or a couple of different talks that I've given talking about the use of stand-alone dehumidifiers in collections they do carry their own level of risk in terms of electrical fire and in terms of flood or moisture risk so there are some particular practices that you should follow when you're doing that that dehumidifier can be a source of heat in the space so that 80 to 90 degrees might be artificial load partially from the dehumidifier one thing that you can sometimes consider and this is something that we use especially in non-mechanized environments in hot and humid climates is that simple air flow air circulation can be very effective in terms of at least mitigating mold concerns you oftentimes still get some warmer temperatures but depending on your own situation what the outdoor temperatures are looking like you may actually be better off looking at control with fans or opening some doors to other external environments whether it's inside of a building sometimes even windows depending on the application if you're just trying to avoid mold if that is your goal but that's a question where your specific approach really comes down to what other factors of the building or the external environment are going on I know in Massachusetts it's been pretty warm lately so that's what I'm going to say that I'd be happy to talk about a little more offline but it's hard to give you a very broad recommendation we have two more minutes and so what I'm going to say there are three questions hanging out here and I'm going to make sure that Jeremy answers them in writing he's going to give me more resources and I've already begun compiling a handout that'll get posted probably along with the recording and I think that's it thank you so much Jeremy this is wonderful thank you everyone who stayed thank you Mike and we'll see you next time remember that the assessments course starts tomorrow and