Central Chiller Plant Replacement & Retrofit
Turnkey central plant replacement — selection, rigging, headers, pumps, towers, VFDs and controls, phased around an occupied building.
Replacing a central chiller plant in a working hospital or research campus is a logistics problem as much as a mechanical one. The machine has to come out through a door that no longer exists, the header has to be re-tied without dropping the building, and the whole sequence has to happen inside windows your facility can actually give up. That phasing plan is what we sell.
CMI performs the full scope in-house: load analysis and equipment selection, structural and rigging coordination, demolition and refrigerant recovery, new chillers, primary and secondary pumping, variable-flow conversion, cooling towers, welded headers and insulation, electrical coordination, VFDs, DDC controls and plant optimization sequences, then startup, TAB and commissioning.
Where an owner wants efficiency rather than like-for-like, we model the alternative: variable-primary flow, high-delta-T pumping, waterside economizer, heat recovery chillers, thermal storage and staging sequences that stop machines from short-cycling. We also handle the utility and SDG&E incentive documentation that often pays for a meaningful part of the upgrade.
Scope & capabilities
- Plant assessment, load analysis, life-cycle cost and equipment selection
- Heavy rigging, crane and roof-hatch coordination, knock-down machines for tight plants
- Primary/secondary to variable-primary flow conversions, high-delta-T pumping
- VFDs, motor starters, electrical coordination and plant power distribution scope
- Startup, TAB, functional testing, incentive paperwork and operator training
- Phased demolition and replacement in occupied hospitals, labs and campuses
- Welded steel and grooved header replacement, insulation, valve and strainer packages
- Cooling tower replacement, basin repair, structural steel and condenser water piping
- BAS plant sequences, staging, optimization, trending and dashboards
The technical envelope
- Typical scope
- 1 – 6 machines, 200 – 5,000 tons total plant
- Delivery models
- Design-build, design-assist, plan & spec hard bid
- Outage strategy
- Phased cutovers, temporary chillers, night/weekend tie-ins
- Included trades
- Mechanical, piping, sheet metal, controls, insulation, rigging
- Wage compliance
- Davis-Bacon / prevailing wage certified payroll
Facility types
Chiller Plant Replacement — straight answers
- Can you replace a chiller without shutting the building down?
- Almost always. We isolate and replace one machine at a time, install temporary rental chillers with hose or hard-piped tie-ins where redundancy is thin, and schedule header cutovers for the lowest-load window. The phasing plan is part of our proposal, not an afterthought.
- Do you handle the electrical and structural work too?
- We carry it as part of the project. VFDs, starters, disconnects, feeder coordination, housekeeping pads, roof curbs, dunnage steel and rigging are all coordinated by CMI under one schedule and one point of contact.
- Will you help us capture utility incentives?
- Yes. We provide the pre- and post-retrofit performance data, equipment efficiency documentation and forms needed for SDG&E and statewide incentive programs, and we design the sequences so the plant actually hits the modeled savings.
Get a number you can budget against
We walk the plant before we price it. You get equipment condition, options, phasing and a schedule — not a guess with a contingency wrapped around it.