Notes from the field.
Practical writing on healthcare, federal and commercial engineering: commissioning, sustainability, structural and the kind of operational details our clients ask us about most.
Before the VA buys land, we check it
National cemeteries run out of room. Before the VA buys the land next door, somebody has to walk it and find out what is actually in the ground.
We renovated a mental health ward around the patients
A five level addition and renovation of an inpatient mental health building that could not close, plus two code problems nobody was looking for.
We replaced every window in the hospital
A window in a VA hospital has more jobs than a window at home. Heat, patient safety, and blast resistance, all in the same frame.
Fire alarm upgrades across 27 buildings
Upgrading the fire alarm systems in 27 occupied buildings at the Bedford VA, and heading off change orders before they could happen.
10,000 feet of chilled water pipe, replaced live
Replacing the chilled water distribution system under an occupied VA hospital, floor by floor, without a single unplanned outage.
A 1940s boiler plant, brought into 2026
Replacing three 900 HP high-pressure steam boilers at the VA Albany campus, while the hospital kept running on steam the whole way through.
Inside the Manchester steam tunnel
Replacing steam piping inside a 500-ft confined-space tunnel under an active VA hospital, surveyed by remote camera so no one had to go in.
The plant that fought itself
On a new $18M combined heat and power plant at the Newington VA, commissioning caught a control sequence cooling its own absorption chillers.
Drilling 2,200 feet to prove geothermal
A 2,200-ft test well and a full NEPA environmental assessment to a FONSI confirmed direct-use geothermal heating was feasible for the Reno VA.
Retrocommissioning 11 VA campuses
Across 11 VA hospital campuses and 10.5M sq ft, retrocommissioning found 15 to 20 percent energy savings with no capital project.
Three layers. One wing
People ask about the logo, so here is the answer. What the mark is, where it came from, and the commitment behind it.
We measure first. Then we design
The drawings on file rarely match what is in the field. Scanning and modeling the real conditions first is what keeps bids accurate and change orders rare.
The boiler plant has to survive an earthquake
For a hospital central plant the standard is not stay standing, it is keep working. What that actually takes on a building framed decades before the code.
What net zero actually means on a federal campus
Net zero is a balance between the energy a campus uses and the energy it makes. Here is what that looks like in practice, on three real VA projects.
Your building is probably wasting 15% of its energy
The equipment is usually fine. It is just running settings nobody has revisited in years, and that gap is worth 15 to 20 percent of your energy bill.
Eight disciplines, one accountable team
Architecture, MEP, structural, owner's rep, commissioning, sustainability, environmental and energy consulting, under one roof and one point of accountability.
Commissioning is not a formality
Commissioning isn't a regulatory checkbox. On a VA power plant it caught a control sequence fighting itself, the case for Cx in one example.
NEPA in plain English
What NEPA requires, what a Finding of No Significant Impact means, and how Alares carries federal projects from assessment to a green light.
Who is protecting your side of the build?
They sound interchangeable. They are not. The difference is whose side the manager is on, and on a hospital campus that shows up in the details.
Healthcare design that ages well
Hospital design must serve patients for decades and work the day after handover. What designing for the long haul looks like on real VA projects.
Have a question we should write about?
If you've got a problem you keep running into on hospital, federal or commercial work, drop us a line. It might be the next post.