South Orange County CCD, IDEA Building Project

Irvine Valley College’s (IVC) new School of Integrated Design, Engineering and Automation (IDEA) was built to be a catalyst for innovative career education opportunities at the Advanced Technology and Education Park (ATEP) in Tustin. 3QC provided commissioning services for the design and construction of the new 32,492 SF two-story facility – the first permanent building built by South Orange County Community College District for IVC on the new 62-acre ATEP site. With the goal of integrating education with industry, the building contains three classrooms and six specialized teaching labs – an alternative energy lab (indoor and outdoor), an optics/photonics lab, an electronics lab, an automation/digital manufacturing lab and an additive and subtractive Design Model Prototyping lab. The building’s large central lobby serves as a social corridor for students, faculty and community members.

On the IDEA Building project, 3QC helped resolve a significant challenge during measurement and verification of building energy usage. When trying to extract energy data from monitoring meters, it was discovered that the wrong meters had been installed by the electrical contractor resulting in ineffective integration and communication with the Building Management System (BMS). 3QC offered several solutions to extract the required data necessary from the data available to ensure proper measurement and to verify that the building was operating within the expected parameters and energy consumption as per the design energy model.

The ATEP project achieved a LEED Gold equivalent level of high performance and energy efficiency and includes a 50kW rooftop solar array. Classes commenced in the building in March 2018.