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North Dakota Ag News Headlines
Full Steam Ahead - Almost
North Dakota Ag Connection - 03/16/2018

When Mark Johnson began his career with the University of North Dakota Facilities as a locksmith back in 1985, he didn't pay much attention to the sky-high smokestack to the south side of campus.

"I knew the steam plant was over there -- I saw the smoke coming out of it, but that's all I knew about it, just like most people on campus," Johnson recalled. "When was the last time you said, let's go to the steam plant and walk through it?" he added with a grin.

Thirty-three years later, a new strategy for steam is one of his top priorities.

As UND Facilities' director of operations & maintenance, Johnson is one of the decision makers behind a recently signed predevelopment agreement with project lead Johnson Controls, which will set in motion potential plans to replace the more-than-a-century-old power center.

Johnson said his steam plant team has had to be resourceful in keeping up with mounting repairs to a system containing boilers that are, in some cases, more than 50 years old.

"They've been able to scrounge and borrow," he said. "Long before the days of eBay they were able to somehow network with other institutions, and if they ever heard that there was an older boiler similar to theirs going out of service, they could scavenge the parts.

"It's a relief to be seriously looking at a viable solution," he added.

The predevelopment phase of planning for a new steam plant will allow UND to begin assembling professional partnerships and services related to design and engineering, so that Facilities can gather solid renderings, data and numbers to embed in a final development agreement.

Mike Pieper, associate vice president for facilities, hopes they can wrap up predevelopment by the end of summer, so that he can present their vision to the State Board of Higher Education (SBHE) for approval and begin a development plan for bidding, construction and occupancy.

Since UND didn't request state appropriation dollars for the project, it will not need legislative approval.

"Each biennium, we get to make three requests. We may only get one request, but we can make three," Pieper explained. "If we take the steam plant off the list, things like Merrifield Hall updates, a STEM building, and improvements to other existing buildings can be on that list."

UND will instead support the $75 million project ($50 million for the plant itself and $25 million for mechanical infrastructure in existing buildings) through a public-private partnership -- in this case, a long-term capital lease agreement.

Pieper made it clear that the steam plant's UND customers and external customers (including Altru Health, the School for the Blind, Grand Forks Public Schools and Greek housing), will not see a steep rise in billing. It will be business as usual throughout the transition.

"The project will be paid for within the existing steam rate," he said. "That was a parameter that we put in place. We don't want to have to increase the steam rate in order for this to work."

A proposal in the UND Master Plan would place a new steam plant on the south side of the current Facilities building, pulling it away from the landscape of the main quad and allowing a more attractive student environment. In its new position, people would only see the top of a shorter, smaller exhaust stack.

If all goes as expected, plant construction could be completed by late fall or early winter of 2019. The old steam plant would then be shut down in the summer of 2020.


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