2024-25 & 2025-26 Techology Award Winners
Posted by jteo on Sep. 29, 2026 / Subscribe 0
Congratulations to the 2024-25 and 2025-26 Technology Award winners for this well-deserved recognition of your outstanding achievements and contributions.
2024-2025 Winners
Regency Ballroom - Alter Engineers
Built in 1908 as a Scottish Rite temple, the six-story Regency Theater building is an iconic venue celebrated for its ornate interior and vibrant events. Recent upgrades modernized the space by electrifying most of the HVAC heating system, bringing refrigerant-based air conditioning directly to the theater, upgrading ventilation rates, and installing high-efficiency MERV 13 filtration for improved air quality.
Building X - AEI
Building X is a LEED v4 BD+C Platinum Certified, 363,000-square-foot office and lab facility featuring a 459,000-square-foot underground parking garage. To maximize performance and slash energy use, the facility integrates active chilled beams for efficient cooling, DOAS enthalpy wheels to recover exhaust energy, 94% efficient hydronic condensing boilers, dual-temperature chilled water loops that eliminate cooling towers, and a 590kW rooftop photovoltaic system — offsetting over 10% of total electricity consumption.
OUSD Claremont - Alter Engineers
Oakland Unified School District accomplished something extraordinary on the Claremont campus: constructing a high-performance, all-electric, naturally ventilated multipurpose building and kitchen on a public school budget. Completed in summer 2024, the state-of-the-art facility features a fully electric kitchen equipped with induction cooktops, electric ovens, a Type-1 exhaust hood, and a CO2-based domestic hot water system that delivers temperatures up to 160°F.
Science and Engineering Innovation Center - AEI
San Francisco State University's Science and Engineering Innovation Center is a 121,000-square-foot, LEED v4 Gold Certified facility spanning five floors and a mechanical penthouse. Built with a 100% all-electric design, the building eliminates natural gas through heat recovery chillers and air-source heat pumps. Efficiency is maximized using a Dedicated Outside Air System (DOAS) with energy recovery coils, an advanced chemical-sensing exhaust fan modulation system that ramps up speed only when necessary, and a 36kW rooftop photovoltaic system generating nearly 59,000 kWh annually.
2025-2026 Winners
USCF Layer Up for Science - UCSF
UCSF Facilities Services teamed up with UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment to launch the "Layer Up for Science" initiative. By widening indoor temperature deadbands from 70–74°F to 68–75°F in accordance with ASHRAE Standard 55, the campus expanded its existing setback and load-curtailment strategies. Using building automation systems and internal staff instead of costly capital upgrades, UCSF delivered a low-cost, rapidly deployable model that slashes energy, operating costs, and greenhouse gas emissions across its complex research facilities.
Northeastern Mary Morse Residence Hall Renovation - Alter Engineers
The modernization of the historic 34,733 sq. ft. Mary Morse Residence Hall in Oakland, CA, completed in summer 2025, addressed a critical seismic retrofit and infrastructure upgrade. The project replaced the failing steam system with a fully electric CO2 heat pump DHW plant and an "electrification-ready" hydronic system. This innovative "bridge" strategy preserves the central steam plant investment while enabling a seamless transition to a zero-emission future.
USCF Block 34 - G&B Engineers
Completed in 2024, the UCSF Bayfront Medical Building is a 182,800-square-foot facility in San Francisco’s Mission Bay. The five-story medical office building houses a 39,000-square-foot ambulatory surgery center with 16 operating rooms, a compounding pharmacy, imaging services, primary and urgent care, adult clinics, and a café. Designed to meet LEED Gold standards and align with the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative, the 100% all-electric building operates entirely on renewable energy.
East Palo Alto - Taylor Engineers
The East Palo Alto Government Center turned an aging equipment replacement for its 50,000-square-foot office building into an impressive decarbonization retrofit—all on a tight budget. By repurposing existing piping for lower-temperature air-to-water heat pumps and applying ASHRAE Guideline 36 advanced control sequences, the design team completely eliminated natural gas use. After one year of operation, the facility not only fully electrified space and water heating, but also slashed overall water consumption by 54% and reduced electricity use by 2%.
Achieving Sustainable Energy Efficiency through Occupancy-Based Ventilation in Healthcare Facilities - R Zero
R-Zero deployed its occupancy and people counting technology across 25,000 sq ft of administrative space at Stanford Children’s Hospital (LPCH) in Palo Alto, California. This solution architecture features a closed loop flow from occupancy and people counting sensors to the BMS through a BACnet gateway and back to the cloud-based M&V platform. A new Sequence of Operations overrides the standard HVAC schedule and enables the system to respond to real-time occupied/unoccupied status.
Genentech Building 86 TI - AEI
This 230,000-square-foot, seven-story facility completed in 2023 was the city’s first all-electric laboratory. The LEED v4 Gold Certified building houses chemistry and biology labs, offices, and amenities while completely eliminating natural gas through heat recovery chillers and air-source heat pumps. By pairing exhaust air energy recovery coils with innovative mechanical design, the facility eliminated cooling towers to save substantial water, cut energy use and costs by 28.5% over the baseline, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 28.5%.
Willard Clubhouse - Alter Engineers
The Willard Clubhouse is the City of Berkeley's first new construction in a decade—a highly efficient, all-electric community hub built for maximum flexibility. Featuring large operable doors that seamlessly blend indoor and outdoor spaces to take advantage of Berkeley’s temperate climate, the project earned LEED Gold certification. Equipped with rooftop photovoltaic panels, the facility operates at net zero energy.
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