The new utility plant for the National Institutes of Health Poolesville Campus was developed on a five acre site and consisted of a 60,000 square foot steel framed, masonry enclosed structure, and a buried cast-in-place utility tunnel to connect steam and chilled water to other campus buildings. Grimberg installed all the utilities necessary for the current campus as well as for future buildings. Equipment included four diesel generators, each rated at 1450kw, and associated 1247kw switchgear. (This equipment is capable of participating in the peak sharing/load equipment program with Allegheny Power, wherein NIH can produce and sell back electricity to Allegheny Power during high demand periods.) The project also included centrifugal hermetic chillers and associated pump systems, two cooling towers, an ozone generating system, and four high-pressure water tube industrial steam boilers which can produce a total of 110,000 PPH of 100psig steam. All systems are continuously monitored by the new campus energy management system. The total project cost was $18,800,000, with a duration of two years.

The construction of the National Institutes of Health new utility plant was unique in its purpose, its state-of-the-art technology, and in its contribution to the community. The utility plant was constructed at NIH’s Poolesville campus to support on-going research and to facilitate growth. The Poolesville campus is located on a 500 acre plot land on the Maryland side of the Potomac River at Edwards Ferry, approximately 40 miles northwest of the Bethesda campus. The remote site created challenges in coordinating the delivery of equipment as well as in not disturbing the quite farm town.

The National Institutes of Health contracted John C. Grimberg Company, Inc. to construct the utility plant responsible for generating steam, chilled water and electricity not only for the current campus facilities but also for future research facilities to be built as part of the twenty-year master plan for the campus. The reliability of all systems provided was essential, as mission critical research relied on uninterruptible utilities. The success of this project was of paramount importance to NIH’s master plan for the Poolesville campus.

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