UC San Diego, Triton Center

Project Summary

Location: La Jolla, CA (UC San Diego campus) 

Dates of Service: 2022 - Current 

Services Performed: Whole-Building Commissioning, Title-24 Acceptance Testing, LEED Fundamental and Enhanced Commissioning, Monitoring-Based Commissioning (MBCx) 

Number of Buildings: 4 

Square Feet: ~340,000 GSF across four buildings (Building A 141,259 GSF, Building B 81,550 GSF, Building C 58,232 GSF, Building D 59,232 GSF), plus approximately 190,000 GSF of below- and above-grade parking 

Systems Commissioned: MEP Systems, Central Energy Plant (Chilled Water and Medium Temperature Water Heat Exchangers and Pumps), Air Handling Units, VAV Terminal Units, Gallery Humidity Control, Isolation Room Exhaust, VRF, Domestic Hot Water, BMS, Electrical Distribution and Metering, Lighting Controls, Standby Power, Irrigation 

Space Types: Student Services and Administrative Offices, Student Health Clinic and Pharmacy, Alumni and Welcome Center, Art Galleries, 500-Person Event Hall, Catering Kitchen, Retail 

A New Front Door for UC San Diego

Triton Center sits on nine acres at 9500 Gilman Drive, just east of Library Walk. The site once held one-story wood buildings from 1942, when the land was part of Camp Matthews. Four new buildings now stand there around a central plaza. Building A is the six-story Triton Administrative Services Building, with student services, the Triton Transfer Hub, Global Initiatives and most of the campus leadership offices. Building B is the four-story Triton Health and Wellness Building, with urgent care, primary care, a pharmacy, optometry and Counseling and Psychological Services. Building C is the Triton Alumni and Welcome Center, a six-level round tower wrapped in an LED media scrim. Building D is the multipurpose building. It holds the 500-person Joan and Irwin Jacobs Celebration Hall and the Strauss Family Meta Gallery. 

The UC Regents approved the project in March 2023. Construction started that summer. McCarthy Building Companies is the general contractor, LMN Architects is the architect and Introba is on the engineering team. UC San Diego puts the cost at $428 million. The project is targeting LEED Gold. The Health and Wellness Building opened in July 2026. The rest of the center is opening in phases through fall 2026. GMC Cx is the commissioning authority under direct contract to UC San Diego. Our scope carries the LEED v4 BD+C Fundamental Commissioning and Verification and Enhanced Commissioning credits, the Title 24 Part 6 and CALGreen commissioning requirements, and Monitoring-Based Commissioning under Enhanced Commissioning Option 1, Path 2. 

What Commissioning Meant on This Project

The commissioned scope spanned five divisions. Division 22 covered domestic cold and hot water, including the water heaters, recirculation pumps and point-of-use temperature and flow checks. Division 23 covered the BMS, the central energy plant, the air handling units, exhaust fans, fan coil units, VAV terminal units and the energy and water meters. Division 25 covered the SkySpark analytics system. Division 26 covered electrical distribution, metering, interior and exterior lighting and controls, and emergency and standby power. Division 32 covered irrigation. 

None of the four buildings makes its own heating or cooling. Campus chilled water and campus high temperature hot water at about 325°F come into a central energy plant in Building D. Three plate-and-frame heat exchangers, each rated 450 tons, decouple the campus chilled water into a 44/64°F building loop. Two shell-and-tube heat exchangers, each sized for the full load, turn the campus hot water into a 180/150°F medium temperature water loop. Both loops run underground to all four buildings on variable-speed pumps. There are no chillers, boilers or cooling towers on the project. The water-side work focused on the campus interface, the heat exchangers, the pumps and the distribution to each building. 

Eight custom Daikin air handling units serve the site. Building A has two, Building B has two, Building C has one and Building D has three. They feed 354 VAV terminal units with hot water reheat, plus return air VAVs that balance return airflow floor by floor. Some spaces needed more than standard comfort control. In Building D, AHU-D3 holds the Flexible Gallery at 50 percent relative humidity, plus or minus 10 percent, around the clock. It uses a desiccant wheel and electrode steam humidifiers to protect the art. In Building B, an isolation room exhaust fan discharges through a bag-in/bag-out HEPA housing. The urgent care exam zone is held at negative pressure on constant volume. The building automation system is Johnson Controls Metasys, installed by AO Reed & Company. 

Design reviews were performed at design development, construction documents, issue for permit and issue for construction. Controls got extra attention before anything was installed. GMC Cx led a page turn of the controls submittal with the facilities team and design team. We also reviewed the points list, trending and alarming, and set up an energy management schedule so zone setpoints, setbacks and schedules were defined up front. 

Commissioning followed ASHRAE Guideline 0 and Specification Section 01 91 13. Pre-functional checklists used a first-in-kind method. The first unit of each equipment type was walked with the installing contractor. Issues found on that unit were applied to all like equipment before the rest were sampled. Plumbing point-of-use checks, electrical distribution, metering and lighting controls were sampled at 20 percent. TAB verification covered hydronic flows, grille and diffuser airflows and airflow measurement stations. Contractors ran pre-verification tests before witnessed functional testing. Startup reports, point-to-point checkout, seven days of trends and alarms, and the TAB report were all required before functional tests were scheduled. 

The integrated systems test simulated a utility outage. GEN-D, the standby generator in Building D, is the alternate power source for the transfer switches in all four buildings. One test verified the generator and the transfer switches across the site, along with the egress lighting, fire alarm, elevators and HVAC and plumbing loads they serve, through the transfer to and from utility power. 

Monitoring-Based Commissioning with SkySpark

Commissioning ends at turnover. Monitoring-Based Commissioning (MBCx) does not. On Triton Center, GMC Cx configured and runs our SkySpark analytics platform against the Metasys data for all four buildings. That satisfies the monitoring-based path under LEED Enhanced Commissioning. It also gives UC San Diego's facilities team a running record of how the buildings operate. Before the analytics went live, the BMS itself was checked for data configuration, critical sensor calibration and data quality. 

Trending. SkySpark collects and stores point data continuously. That lets us review performance across days, weeks and seasons rather than from a single snapshot. Trends cover supply air temperature and duct static pressure against setpoint, VAV airflow and zone temperature, the central plant heat exchangers and pumps, gallery humidity in Building D and the thermal energy meters at each building. 

Fault Detection. Analytics rules run against the live data and flag conditions without anyone looking for them. They catch simultaneous heating and cooling, valves hunting or stuck open, sensors reading flat or outside calibration, zones that can't hold setpoint and equipment running outside its schedule. 

Troubleshooting. The same connection used to read the buildings is also used to test them. AutoCx uses SkySpark's supervisory control to override BMS setpoints at the equipment level and run functional test scripts automatically. That lets HVAC and controls be tested at 100 percent rather than on the sample ASHRAE Guideline 0 contemplates. When a comfort call or alarm comes in during the warranty period, the trend data is already in hand. The cause can be traced to a specific piece of equipment and sequence and handed to the right party, rather than chased as a hot or cold complaint. 

Why It Matters 

Triton Center brings student services, student health, alumni relations and the campus's main event and gallery spaces together at one front door. About 340,000 GSF across four buildings runs off one central energy plant and one standby generator. A problem in the plant, the standby power or the controls can show up in every building at once. Those shared systems were verified by test rather than accepted on startup. The MBCx scope continues past turnover through seasonal functional testing, the in-warranty review and ongoing optimization.