Page 194 - Sustainable On-Site CHP Systems Design, Construction, and Operations

The Engineering Pr ocess 167

Plan Check
Most urban areas in regulated economies require the owner, developer, and/or contractor
to obtain permits to construct (see Chap. 12). Failure to obtain a required permit from
any agency which has jurisdiction could result in fines or failure to obtain an operating
permit after construction. Failure to obtain a permit can also mean possible stoppage of
construction with resulting costly delays, and possible forfeiture of investments.
As discussed in Chaps. 6 and 12, multiple permits to construct and to operate are
often required with the specific requirements dependent upon the location and the type
of facility. As previously noted, typically, planning department approval is required,
and should be obtained after programming, as the planning committee will likely want
to see some basic site plans and elevations so that they can visualize the proposed work.
The air quality permit requires a parallel track effort. As detailed in Chap. 12, the air
emission permit process needs to begin early in the design process with any air quality
agency concerns addressed and incorporated into the design.
Local building departments or state agencies review construction documents (plans,
specifications, and structural calculations) for conformity to applicable code requirements.
The CHP team will need to incorporate and respond to all agency review comments and
resubmit the construction documents for back-check (or obtain over-the-counter back-
check if initial review comments were minor) in order to obtain a permit to construct.

Bid Documents
After all plan check comments have been reviewed and incorporated, the bid docu-
ments are printed for agency stamp, as required, after which the owner-operator and,
or developer issues the construction documents (i.e., the drawings showing the pro-
posed work, the contract general conditions, and the technical specifications) to con-
tractors for bid (see Chap. 13 for various contractual arrangements).
The owner-operator and/or developer may award the construction contract by a
number of methods including using in-house resources, acting as the prime contractor
and subcontracting the various trades, by low bid, to a general contractor, or by negoti-
ated bid with a selected contractor. Regardless of the method used, the documents that
are used for the final negotiated price are called bid documents. Any changes to the
documents (plans, specifications, etc.) after this stage are established by a change to the
contract or so-called change-order.
During this bidding or final pricing stage, the CHP design team should answer bidder
questions. The questions are formally posed and called requests for information (RFIs).
The engineering team should formally reply to the RFIs in a timely fashion and with
required addenda to the documents to clarify and to explain any areas of confusion. All
RFIs should be funneled through a single responsible party and the CHP team’s response
should be sent to all prospective bidders. It is important that this be done in a formal way
to ensure that no bidder gains an unfair advantage and to ensure that the bids are based on
complete and correct information. It should be a policy that any answers which are not so
documented are not to be relied on and are not a part of the final contract.

Key CHP Design Issues
The second half of this chapter focuses on highlighting some of the key CHP design
issues that should be considered by the CHP engineering team. Combined heat and
power systems (CHP) are usually complicated design challenges and as such there are