rgical Intensive Care Unit, the staff quickly
prepared to vacate the building. Hardened by Hurricane Andrew, which devastated the
area in 1992, and fresh from Y2K drilling in 1999, the Miami hospital staff immediately
began their Disaster Recovery Plan.

Three companies responded to this emergency, one of which was
Siemens Westinghouse
Technical
Services (a business of Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc.).


The Facilities Management staff quickly established that the explosions came from the main
electrical distribution room. As it later became clear, the fire occurred during an upgrade to the
power distribution in the switchgear room. The switchgear room had been designed in the
1960s and maintained per that eras electrical code and technology, permitting normal and
emergency power to be housed in the same cabinet. The explosions blew through all cabinets
and disrupted power, leaving the main tower of fourteen floors without normal or emergency
power. Temperatures in the vault approached 2,000ºF, melting two-inch thick solid copper buss
bars, bending steel, evaporating aluminum and destroying all the cabling. Fortunately, the walls
were designed to encapsulate the electrical distribution center, preventing the fire from
spreading.

Facilities Management quickly determined that power could not be brought back and decided to
evacuate all 241 in-patients. With the stairway lighting out, they had to be innovative. They
purchased forty strings of construction lights from a local supplier and powered them by gas
generators, thereby providing lighting to the stairwells for evacuation. The Miami Fire
Department and Miami VA staffs then were able to evacuate all main tower patients within
twelve hours.

Phase I Reconstruct
With the immediate danger over, the VA turned to reconstruction. The facility was operating on
emergency power and losing millions of dollars that could have been spent on healthcare for the
veterans, so recovery for the short term was a pressing issue.

A three-phase approach was taken:
a) become operational immediately with temporary power;
b) use refurbished equipment to open the facility as soon as possible, while meeting all codes
for the next two years;
c) build a completely new and integrated infrastructure within three to five years.

The first step was to return the nursing home and Research and Education (R&E) buildings to
full operation. With help from the local utility company, our engineers first looked for pad-
mounted transformers to provide new feeds and a distribution center to undamaged switchgear
in the R&E, nursing home and Ambulatory Care areas. The original design consisted of a primary distribution network that was controlled by Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) a
spot network in Miami that had three 13,200 volt feeders that came into FPLs high voltage
vault, which then fed a north and south vault. One side of the vault handled mechanical
equipment loads and the other handled the emergency distribution gear, the normal power for
elevators, walk-in boxes, lighting, and so forth. FPL was willing to go beyond their standard
practices to accommodate our pressing needs.

The facility required about 1,000 amps and R&E required a feeder of 1,600 feet. FPL suggested
running a 13,000 high-voltage line across a rooftop to an emergency transformer that they could
install on the roofsomething that has never been done beforeso power could be provided
for Ambulatory Care. FPL set up a 1,000 KVA pad-mounted transformer the next day, bringing
in and connecting the primary at 13.2 volts. Meanwhile, a team of twenty-five VA field workers
was organized to handle the secondary 480-volt side.

Within four days of the fire, Phase I was complete. Ambulatory Care, R&E and the nursing
home buildings were powered with a new feed, using the switchgear present at each site to
distribute the load.

Phase II Reconstruct
The Facilities Management team was far from celebrating, however, for the second phase
required rebuilding our electrical distribution system and finding a company with the expertise
and the inventory on hand to bring us back quickly, safely and at the right price.

Facilities management first compiled a single-line CAD drawing to pick up all the existing loads,
as well as breakers, wire sizes and feeder lengths. The VA had originally planned on a 5,000
amp distribution board but kept finding additional loads, so we split the distribution into two
4,000 amp boards (if we had gone with 5,000 amp distribution, we would have missed out on
the possibility of using COTS equipment).

We chose to move the switchgear room adjacent to the main electrical riser closet, and then
relocated the automatic transfer switches, a normal 4,000 amp distribution board, eight transfer
switches and the emergency distribution board to that adjacent room. This allowed us to
maintain the existing pathways from the burned-out room as a main distribution throughout the
complex. This point was important because the amount of utilities that are in the waypower,
signal, data, steam and chilled water, sewer and medical gasses made it very difficult to run
conduit and wire in the sub-basement.

The solution included pad-mounted transformers and a set of distribution gear in Ambulatory
Care to pick up all the sub-feeds. That way, if a major fault ever occurred again, the VA would
be able to interrupt it at a very low level. The VA would put ground fault protection on the mains
coming into the new distribution boards, and on the secondary feeders going out.

The primary function of the phase II project was to remove and dispose of all of the fire-
damaged gear and install either new or refurbished gear of adequate quality to provide good
service for several years (with the possibility of re-using those components in the final phase).

So the VA designed a scope of work and, to limit the governments liability, did it as a design-
build, providing the contractor the size of the circuits and distribution gear and leaving them to
come up with the particulars. We actually condensed the fifty detailed drawings and two
hundred pages of specifications that are the normal scope of work for a project of this size to a two-page scope of work. In addition, we provided three drawings of an equipment layout and a
single-line drawing that showed the size of the equipment, capacity and size of the feeders.

Because this was a public emergency, facilities management did the bidding stage based on
technical merit rather than the lowest cost. The VA used authorized legal/technical reviews by
local officials to help with the bidding process.

Three companies responded to the bid, one of which was Siemens Westinghouse
Technical Services (a business of Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc.).
It decided to
subcontract with one of the other bidders to put together a team that would best suit the
hospitals needs and have us operational as quickly as possible.

The third vendor told us it would take three to six months to have the hospital back and it
wanted to manufacture switches and still had to organize to bring in crews. The Siemens
Westinghouse team told us they would bring in their electrical crews that day and have all the
switchgear on station the next day, the main part of the hospital would be back up within ten
days and the project completed within three weeks. We awarded them the contract based on
technical merit and speed to complete.

Working Smoothly Around the Clock

The team began gutting the vault within minutes of the contract being signed. Unbeknownst to
us, their crew had been waiting outside the gate because they knew that, if they were awarded
the contract, they couldnt afford to waste any time.

With 50 electricians and engineers working two 12-hour shifts, they had the tower back up in
eight days and we remained ahead of schedule from then on. This despite the cards being
stacked heavily against uswe had no drawings of our electrical system. When the building
was built in 1963, the electrical distribution system met all the codes and requirements of the
time, and had been well maintained since.
Everything that had been destroyed was replaced and installed, including all of the switchgear,
nine transfer switches, a fire pump controller, all of the breaker panels, and three miles of
electrical cable needed to distribute the power.

The entire project took three weeks and three days to complete, four days ahead of an already
ridiculously tight deadline and despite the most adverse of conditions. The success of the
project was confirmed with the seamless transfer of power from the emergency generators to
FPL power, showing zero wiring errors.

To bring back a 1.3 million square foot hospital that had lost its entire distribution system in
three-and-a-half weeks is a miracle. If there is one truth about this project, it is that it would not
have happened without extraordinary teamwork from all the players. This has been the most
harmonious contracting effort we have experienced over the last three decades. The contractors
really cared about the project and interfaced well with our facility. Neither party haggled, but
shared everything from expertise and tools to lunch. Thats how the Miami VA was able to serve
its veterans at full capacity within one month of the fire, with three distribution centers, three
transformersand the emerg