Social Security Administration National Support Center

Overview

Spanning 275,000 square feet, the Social Security Administration (SSA) National Support Center is a Tier III data center that maintains the demographic, wage, and benefit information of almost every American. The facility supports approximately 10 megawatts (MW) of information technology server load and houses roughly 80 employees. The facility features IT white space, an office building, and an access control center.

SSA National Support Center maintains the demographic, wage, and benefit information of almost every American.

Our Approach

To increase the facility's energy savings, we utilized heat recovery chillers for latent cooling and hot water production. This design eliminated the need for gas-fired boilers and the smaller heat recovery chiller could be used to generate chilled water when there was not enough IT load to run the main chillers at minimum capacity.

Owner requirements mandated that a minimum of three days-worth of cooling tower make-up water be stored in the event of a main water failure. To meet this requirement, we designed five independent 100,000-gallon below-grade concrete cooling tower sumps which supported the cooling towers and housed this make-up water during normal operating conditions.

Having five independent sumps allows the towers to be kept at different water temperatures while increasing the number of waterside economizer hours of the central plant. Additionally, to reduce the make-up water use to the cooling towers, a storm water reclamation system is used to collect, treat, and provide make-up water to the facility.

Southland designed a series of innovations that aided in achieving LEED Gold certification.

Result

With a goal of creating significant energy savings, Southland designed a series of innovations that aided in achieving LEED Gold certification. The design team utilized elevated chilled water temperatures for sensible cooling requirements to decrease the amount of energy utilized and to increase the amount of time the waterside economizer could be used. This design significantly lowered utility and maintenance costs throughout the year.

• Successful Partnerships

  Owner: General Services Administration
  GC: Hensel Phelps
  Architect: Corgan, Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM)

• Award-Winning Results

  2015 DBIA National Award of Merit – Federal, State, County, Municipal