Santa Clara University Swig Hall, Santa Clara, CA

Category: Schools

Square Footage: 81,677 sq ft

Services Provided: Plumbing

Completion Date: 2017

Owner: Santa Clara University

Mechanical Contractor: Therma Corporation

General Contractor: Blach Construction

This 12-story residence hall was built in 1965 and the sanitary plumbing waste risers serving the bathroom and shower cores within the building needed to be replaced—while the building was occupied.

Pragmatic PE had to study the routing of the waste lines in the building to determine how the work could proceed from floor-to-floor with no extended shutdowns. Designing the floors construction sequences was easier because there are two bathroom cores per floor. The hardest challenge was figuring out how to replace the piping once the two cores joined together before exiting the building to the utility lines of the wastewater department. Pragmatic PE visited the site and worked with the contractor and Santa Clara University facilities personnel to figure out how the building-central lines could be replaced with the shortest shutdown possible. The project proceeded into construction without any issues and the 60-year old building has been in operation with new sanitary lines ever since.