RALEIGH—The Fitts-Wollard Hall has thrown open its doors to students following a collaboration between North Carolina State University and Clark Nexsen, who acted as both the architect and engineer on the project. The $150 million, 225,000-square-foot engineering building sits on the college’s Centennial Campus, which is largely devoted to scientific research.

Fitts-Wollard Hall represents the latest iteration in the college’s Think and Do campaign, meant to marry prominent ideas with practical execution. Accordingly, the new building is meant to showcase “engineering on display” via extensive glass windows allowing more sunlight to penetrate the interior of the four-story building. Entry lobbies at the south and north ends of the building are connected to one another via open corridors that allow passersby to peer directly into the engineering labs.

The Fitts-Woolard Hall represents the first time NC State has utilized a public-private partnership to underwrite constructing an academic building. Half of the funding came from a 2016 bond referendum and the rest from private donors—the most prominent of whom were alumni Edward P. Fitts Jr. and Edgar S. Woolard Jr., whose $25M joint gift was recognized with naming rights.

“Fitts-Woolard Hall is an engineering hub that provides critical infrastructure for catalyzing new innovations and developing tomorrow’s workforce,” NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson commented.

Flanking the engineering building’s south entry are a structural testing lab, senior student project space and large-scale driving simulator, all of which are visible as people walk through the building. The building’s educational spaces and openly visible structural engineering elements are meant to inspire students and educators to look to the future at tomorrow’s challenges.

“The concept of engineering on display takes the work being done inside the building and celebrates it by making it visible,” Clark Nexsen principal Shann Rushing said of this paradigm. “You get a visual connection to the research and instruction happening in the building.

“The steel-plated monumental stairs have an exposed truss design that is structurally expressive,” Rushing added. “The stairs weave upward alongside a feature wall designed to reflect the diverse engineering studies housed in the building. The form of the stairs also creates a variety of gathering and collaboration spaces.”

Fitts-Woolard Hall will bring together under one roof the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and the Fitts Department of Industrial and System Engineering. The hall will offer 100 classrooms and laboratories. Additionally, teaching and research spaces in the building will support global tech firms in sectors including manufacturing, robotics and sensor technology, transportation and logistics, and bioengineering. On the second floor, an open area known as the “hearth” will allow for student-faculty interaction.

The engineering building’s campus neighbor is the James B. Hunt Jr. Library, designed by Clark Nexsen and Snøhetta.

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Most universities across the country have established green initiatives. Many of them are implementing combined heat and power systems, a technology the federal government actively encourages, to help them achieve those goals.

In recent years, universities have been responding to the interest of students, professors, donors and community members in their environmental sustainability programs. As an article published in School Construction News last year pointed out, financial pressures are a real issue and sustainability initiatives can help universities reduce operating costs. This is especially important in the new normal after the Great Recession, as state funding for higher education has not fully recovered in many parts of the country.

Combined Heat & Power

Combined heat and power (CHP), also known as cogeneration, is one way universities address sustainability and financial goals. In a nutshell, combined heat and power is an efficient way to generate electricity and thermal energy using a unit of fuel. Some systems do this by recovering the waste heat that results from the generation of electricity by a combustion turbine and using it to generate thermal energy in the form of steam or hot water. Other systems pass high-pressure steam through a steam turbine to generate electricity and then use the steam for other purposes like heating buildings.

The result is the production of substantially more energy from a unit of fuel. The resulting efficiency is almost double that of independent generation of electricity and thermal energy. Combined heat and power systems increase overall energy efficiency from 45 to 55 percent up to 65 to 85 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

CHP facilities can work with a variety of fuels, including natural gas, biogas and biomass. Combined heat and power is currently used in a number of applications in addition to universities, including manufacturing facilities and large resorts.

Examples of CHP on Campus

North Carolina State University (NC State) in Raleigh installed a CHP system in 2012 in its Cates Utility Plant, replacing an older boiler system that generated thermal energy for building heating and other uses. According to the university’s website, “The renovation of Cates Utility Plant on campus increases the 11-megawatt facility’s efficiency by roughly 35 percent. It is also expected to reduce the university’s greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent, building on a 7 percent reduction from 2008 to 2010 and moving NC State closer toward its goal of climate neutrality by 2050.”

In 2016, Emory University embraced CHP by installing a new steam turbine at its existing steam plant on campus. As an article by Emory’s Sustainability Initiatives team stated at the time, “Emory is thrilled to include cogeneration in its energy-use portfolio and efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. Although it does not entirely cancel Emory’s utilization of fossil fuels, it’s one important step because now we’re making more efficient use of those resources.”

Federal Support for CHP

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) touts the benefits of combined heat and power. The agency emphasizes the efficiency gains that result in burning less fuel. “CHP reduces emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants,” according to an EPA fact sheet.

The EPA has a CHP Partnership program through which it works to facilitate the development of new CHP projects. The program has more than 400 partners, including universities in New York, Iowa, Utah and California.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced the commitment of $25 million to continue its support of regional CHP Technical Assistance Partnerships (CHP TAPs) at eight locations around the country, six of which are at universities in North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maine and Washington. According to the Department of Energy, this approach “can support U.S. economic competitive advantage, promote economic development, instill resiliency in businesses and communities, create and maintain local energy-related jobs, and provide solutions for modernizing energy generation and delivery.”

To read the entire article, check out the March/April issue of School Construction News.

Steve Hunting is an attorney with Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP. He focuses on energy and technology projects and transactions, and advises universities, among other clients, on combined heat and power, energy storage and microgrid projects from the firm’s Charlotte, N.C., office.

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