UNH Utility Upgrades and Smith Hall Hot Water Plant Replacement

Durham NH

The Smith Hot Water Plant Replacement Project was executed on an accelerated summer schedule within the heart of an occupied university campus. The work required maintaining uninterrupted admissions, housing, dining, parking, and pedestrian access while replacing critical underground utilities and constructing a new electrified hot water plant serving Smith Hall, Sawyer Hall, Scott Hall, and Stillings Dining Hall.

A catastrophic fire at the piping manufacturer’s facility delayed production of custom underground piping, threatening critical occupancy milestones. The team mitigated the disruption through expanded project phasing, accelerated trench preparation, and enhanced public safety measures.

Additional challenges included constrained mechanical spaces, complex utility coordination, weather-sensitive excavation, and building out a specialized electrified hot water plant using laser scanning and BIM modeling. Despite these challenges, the project achieved nearly 20,000 incident-free work hours while advancing UNH’s long-term decarbonization goals.