Tulare County New South Justice Center

3QC provided building commissioning services for the new 100,299 SF courthouse located in Porterville, California. The Superior Court of Tulare Courty originally had 5 separate locations to service the entire county. With significant population growth in the city of Porterville, the Court decided to create two main service regions and locate a new court in the city of Porterville – the New South Justice Center. The new $93 million, 9 room courthouse consolidated the services of three court rooms from the existing court in Porterville, and one function from the Tulare-Pixley court. The new facility alleviated overcrowding, poor security and various facility physical and logistical problems for the court. The building was designed with sustainability in mind and achieved 54 of 110 credits to obtain LEED NC v3 Silver certification in 2014. The facility features an expansive covered courtyard that serves as a public gathering place. One of the building’s major design features is the use of natural daylight in all courtrooms. Other sustainable features include careful choice of building materials, practices to minimize construction waste, and energy efficient measures including: solar water heating, high efficiency heating and cooling systems, drought tolerant landscaping and a high efficiency irrigation systems. 3QC performed enhanced commissioning service providing valuable credits for LEED certification and ensured that the facility was functioning as the court intended upon occupancy in October of 2013.

Key to our involvement on this project was our ability to communicate and work with the existing staff. We provided strategies to optimize building operations to the building staff, enabling them to perform their jobs better and improve the quality of building operations. Our team worked through security and safety procedures at each project and have direct experience working with courthouse staff.