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Mission: Cooling Is Critical

When the Chicago Board of Options Exchange moved into its new building in 1984, its infrastructure was designed to accommodate all aspects of the daily trading activity at the exchange. Architects and contractors designed the building with the highest standards available at that time. What they didn’t count on were the rapid advancements in technology that would greatly impact the way business would be conducted at CBOE in the years to come.

Nearly twenty-five years later, the time had come for the facility’s management to take a close look at the age and operation of their equipment and determine what could be done to make their building more efficient. The Chief Engineer learned of some exciting changes that were being made at CBOE, 400 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, and contacted Director of Engineering, Angelo Saccameno, to update us on some of the major initiatives that have taken place at the exchange.

CBOE, the largest options exchange in the United States, was founded in 1973. Today, CBOE trades options on approximately 1,900 individual stocks (i.e., Microsoft, IBM, and Google), 30 broad-based and sector specific indexes (i.e. S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq-100) and over 100 Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs (i.e., Diamonds, Spiders, and QQQ). Year-to-date in 2007, average daily volume at CBOE is more than 3.5 million contracts per day, which accounts for more than one-third of all industry volume. On a highly volatile day for the markets this past February, CBOE traded nearly 7 million contracts, making it the busiest day in the exchange’s 34-year history.

Each day, CBOE’s trading floor is home to several thousand traders, brokers, clerks and exchange staff - all wearing brightly colored trading jackets. Trading at CBOE is conducted through a Hybrid Trading System, a unique market model that combines electronic and open outcry trading into one environment. Presently, over 96% of all orders at CBOE experience sub-second electronic execution.

In 2006, this 385,000 sq-ft., 7 story building was still operating with all the original equipment. Because CBOE deals in hundreds of millions of dollars of trading on a daily basis, the building is deemed a “mission critical” structure – meaning this building is a vital cog, not only in the Chicago financial community but in the global marketplace - and there must be no loss of power at any time. Most of the building’s equipment has been parallel sourced, dual sourced, and is dual fed. As such, it was time to evaluate the current condition of the building systems and determine what could be done to bring them up-to-date.

Equipment designed 25 years ago had a specific heat load to process and rapid changes in technology have moved the trading floor from a latent heat load to a process load. Over the past two decades the trading floor population has decreased by almost 60%, leaving a latent heat reduction close to 50%. In contrast, the process heat load had almost doubled. An infrastructure analysis by EnerG Associates, LLC concluded the building’s design no longer fit with its current needs and that more economical means to produce the cooling necessary for this “mission critical” building should be explored.

The first challenging part of any project is to get all the departments together to communicate what their current needs are and what they project they may need in the future. When this was accomplished at CBOE, two very crucial points became apparent. First, because the process load of the data center was the driving force in this building, it required so much cooling that the comfort level of the latent load was too cold. The solution: create an independent cooling loop for the process load which enabled the data center to be cooled independent of the whole building. Second, because CBOE is a mission critical building, its mechanical systems require a high level of reliability. In the event of catastrophic failure of cooling towers or chillers, a secondary means of cooling must be available.

Due to the fact that CBOE never shuts down, the $3 million project was fast-tracked. Begun in December of 2006, the final completions were made in June of 2007. In the EnerG Associates analysis, it was determined that the cooling towers were in poor condition and unable to support the systems used year-round by the chillers. Three new BAC 900-ton towers operating on variable speed drives were installed, allowing for future expansion of the load. A helicopter lift was instituted as the best means of getting the towers placed and on-line as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, on the day the lift was scheduled, Mother Nature decided to present a little challenge of her own. That morning, a fog covered the city and the lift was scrapped. As a result, a second attempt was required and an alternate option was devised: using a crane to lift the towers. This option, however, involved a multi-leveled coordination plan between CBOE, contractors, and neighboring buildings to accomplish the task.

Mechanical contractor, Anchor Mechanical, supported by Olympic Pipe, pre-fabbed as much of the piping as possible. “With a mandatory shutdown of the building for this phase of the work, we were under a tight schedule. It was a pretty intense job,” according to Angelo. A 32-man crew came in, drained the system, tie-ins were installed and the system was back online within 32 hours.

Several crane companies had been approached regarding the lift. Not one was ready to take on the logistics of trying to lift the tower cells into place. Nor were they positive the street would hold the weight. Only one company, Gatwood Cranes, felt they could handle the job.

Now ready for the towers, on a Friday night, the surrounding streets were closed, Gatwood Cranes came in and started assembling their 360-ton crane on LaSalle Street to prepare for the lift. The lift was completed on Saturday, and the crane was dismantled and gone by Sunday, and come 8:30 a.m. Monday morning, the Opening Bell rang and trading resumed without a hitch. Within a week the system was back online. For the next two consecutive weekends the same procedure was followed until all three towers were in place and operating. At no time during the entire process was cooling to the building ever lost.

We asked Angelo if anything about this job stood out in his mind. He replied, “I like the challenge of any job, especially if someone tells me it can’t be done.” He continued, “this wasn’t the only challenge of the job. Next we had to figure out how to get a 900-ton chiller down to the sub-basement.”

Seemed pretty fundamental: you lower it down the elevator shaft!

The existing chiller plant consisted of two Trane 900-ton Centra Vac chillers and one 500-ton chiller. Already running at full capacity, original plans called for replacing the 500-ton chiller with a newer, more efficient 750-ton chiller. By May of 2006, it was deemed necessary to increase the size of that new chiller to a 900-ton Carrier 19EF 134a to allow for future expansion. “Technology produces a different kind of heat load,” Angelo told us. “We knew that if our technology was going to continue to grow, we needed to be prepared to cool it,” he added. A gantry rigged on the 4th floor across the elevator shaft allowed the chiller to be lowered down in three separate pieces. Angelo likened it to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, but it was a challenge he was ready to face. Once in the basement, the chiller was re-assembled and put in place. Another challenge conquered.

The new infrastructure of the building has accomplished two critical missions for the exchange. One, the data floor is now on its own cooling loop, separate from the the base building space, thereby affording the opportunity to keep the data center at a much cooler temperature than the occupied space. Two, the staff also now has the option of cooling the building as one big load. Should maintenance on any piece of equipment be required, that portion of the loop can be isolated and repairs can be made with no loss of cooling encountered.

CBOE maintains five independent terminals to five ComEd substations. In the event that the power from all five leads is lost, a total of 2250 kVa of emergency generator backup power is available strictly to fill the vital role of keeping the trading floor operational. In the unlikely event that even the generator backup power should fail, emergency quick-connect tie-ins were installed to maintain the high level of reliability important to this building. These tie-ins supply the necessary valves and pipes to enable the engineering staff to install a temporary 700-ton chiller outside of the building to provide cooling requirements until full service can be restored.

Improving energy efficiency was a large part of the project. By installing a plate and frame heat exchanger, condenser water from one cell of the cooling tower can be dropped to 40ºF chilled water when outside air temperature permits. By using this method, energy savings will be realized because the exchange will not have to run a chiller yet will still be able to meet the critical load.

CBOE also undertook the installation of a new UPS system to support the data center applications. The increase in heat load by the new system was taken into consideration when plans for the upgrades were made. Also taken into account was an increase in distribution racks for future needs. The cooling system needed to be able to handle an increase in heat load.

Lighting throughout the building was also examined. After EnerG Associates concluded their audit, the 100-watt incandescent floodlamps used to light the lobby were replaced with 25-watt halogen floodlamps. Incandescent fixtures throughout the facility were replaced with self-ballasted 15-watt compact fluorescent lamps. About two-thirds of the office areas had previously been retrofitted with T-8 lamps and electronic ballasts. The remaining areas were also retrofitted with T-8 lamps.

When projects with a large scope like this are finished, Angelo’s staff is not. CBOE is a 24/7/365 operation. His department oversees 99.9% of the structural projects in the building including, but not limited to, chillers, air handlers, cooling towers, domestic water, and lighting. Angelo reports directly to the Vice President of Facilities, LuAnn O’Shea. Together, LuAnn and Angelo analyzed each phase of this project, evaluated the viability and scope of work to be completed, and concluded that this project was a positive and necessary directive for CBOE to undertake. Angelo’s staff, consisting of Assistant Chief Engineer Neil Daly and engineers Jim Kosirog, Mike Kordik, Gerald Reddy, Brandon Sidler, and Tom Maher, all played a major and integral part in the successful outcome of this monumental project.

In the end, several benefits were achieved in this project, most notably, the building becoming more operationally efficient, saving money for the exchange; upgrading the infrastructure to improve building conditions in both the comfort level and process levels; and creating a payback time of 3.1 years. Through comprehensive review and analysis, CBOE has prepared its building to meet the needs of the present, while planning for the challenges of the future - no small task in today’s rapidly evolving financial industry.

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