Salas O’Brien is committed to producing designs that are reliable, efficient, and cost-effective. When our clients come to the table with unique challenges and obstacles, we rise to the occasion and deliver excellent results. Our work with the County of San Bernardino is no exception.

San Bernardino’s West Valley Detention Center is one of California’s largest county jails, with capacity to house up to 3,347 medium- to maximum-security inmates. It has the finest medical, dental, and mental health services of any correctional facility in the county, and it offers inmates a wide variety of education and vocational programs, religious services, and substance abuse counseling.

Because the facility must remain secure on a 24-hour basis, it requires extremely reliable power generation. The county knew they could trust Salas O’Brien’s work, so they contracted our team to complete a full assessment and design for the modernization of the facility’s emergency generator system.

During the review, our engineers determined that installing a high-efficiency auxiliary chiller would greatly improve the reliability of the chiller plant. This upgrade required our team to wire the auxiliary chiller into the new, triple-1000kW backup generator system and to complete a comprehensive 20-year ease-of-maintenance plan. We also completed an overall reduction of site energy costs and integrated the generators with the existing thermal energy storage system and chiller plant.

The work we completed for the county ensures an uninterrupted power supply for the detention center, which in turn enables officials to maintain a safer environment for inmates and the surrounding community.