Ramtech has received a contract award from the City of Austin to provide an 8,064 square foot modular office building that will be located at the City’s Watershed Protection Department. The new facility will provide space for 14 private offices, a conference room, a large training classroom, and restrooms with showers and adjacent locker areas. The project will also incorporate a number of sustainable features into the building’s design and construction, beginning with the use of Ramtech’s traditional modular construction approach.
This construction method results in substantially reduced materials waste and improved air quality by utilizing a factory controlled manufacturing environment that segregates the building materials from the exposure to inclement weather. The use of a simultaneous offsite and on-site construction process also minimizes the disturbance to the environment by reducing the number of vehicles and equipment that are required at the building site.
Other sustainable features that are incorporated into the building’s design include a white reflective TPO roof that reduces heat island effect, water use reduction strategies for the restrooms, and optimized energy performance that builds on the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code. This includes heating and cooling with the use of Lennox “L” Series high-efficiency zoned rooftop HVAC units, but because the building will incur infrequent high occupancy loads only during training sessions in a small section of the building, CO2 sensors and energy recovery ventilators will also be installed to meter the flow of outside air in order to match the usage demand during peak and off peak periods.
The building will also include several 10 inch Solatube Day Lighting skylights to increase the natural light in the interior spaces, as well as provisions to incorporate photovoltaic panels into a field constructed south facing awning and sunshades over all window openings. The interior will be finished out using low VOC emitting materials including Altro CS, a PPC-free sheet vinyl floor covering.
The City of Austin’s Watershed Protection Department was established in 1991 to manage the city’s creeks, drainage systems and water quality programs. The city is relocating the Watershed Protection Department personnel from an outdated and smaller facility that the city had been leasing, to the new modular building which will be located at the department’s Dalton Lane location. Ramtech anticipates completion of the project by June 30, 2015.
