As global cybersecurity attacks escalate, tools to detect and prevent such threats are more critical than ever. Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology (RIT) went to great lengths to answer that call with construction of its ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI), a state-of-the-art, three-story, 52,000-square-foot campus facility designed to be a top destination for cybersecurity education, training and research worldwide.

Funded by grants and donations from the state of New York, ESL Federal Credit Union, IBM and others, RIT describes GCI as “a space where people from different academic disciplines, industry and government are collaborating to expand cybersecurity knowledge and make it usable in the real world.” Officially opened in spring 2021, Rochester-based Schuler-Haas Electric Corp. and intelligent power management company Eaton, Cleveland, worked together to fabricate assemblies to save time and money.

A high-tech target

“Schuler-Haas Electric Corp. was founded in 1961 by my business partner Ed Schuler’s father, Jack Schuler, and his aunt Joyce, along with George Haas,” said Dan Streicher, president and CEO, who joined the company in 1990 as an estimator and project manager. “We’re a commercial/industrial contractor with a focus on healthcare, data center, higher education, water/wastewater and food processing facilities, and the largest solar installer in New York state.”

Currently employing 550 people, Streicher said, “our service area is mid-to-western New York and the entire southern tier to the Hudson Valley, and we have additional offices in Ithaca, Corning and Binghamton.”

Located 5 minutes from RIT’s 1,300-acre main campus, “we’ve done a lot of work for RIT and the University of Rochester over the years,” Streicher said. “In the case of this project, which started in early 2019, Rochester-based construction manager LeChase Construction put out an RFP for a bid. We’re on a preferred bid list for LeChase and RIT and we were successfully awarded the project.

“Because cybersecurity is such a growing concern and need in the world today, RIT wanted to create a dedicated new cybersecurity program for their students covering everything they’d need to know going into that field,” he said. 

“Among other features, the unique building houses a high-tech Operations Center with rows of tables and multiple screens that places students in simulated cybersecurity challenges within a range of different real-life settings, as well as RIT-logoed windows etched in illuminated binary code.”

“The brand-new, LEED-certified facility was constructed from the ground up, and our role was to bring electrical and data services into the building and provide security infrastructure,” Streicher said. “Our crew of anywhere from 2–14 team members provided and installed all of the electrical switchgear (panels), fire alarm systems, outlets, switches and sophisticated lighting and control systems, as well as the conduit, wire and data cabling that connects everything.”

Though the Schuler-Haas team secured all the necessary material in 2019, prior to the onset of pandemic-related supply shortages and shipping delays, the 2020 installation during COVID presented challenges.

“Our guys had to work with masks and be separated by 6 feet, which was especially difficult on tasks that required two or more workers,” Streicher said. 

“Due to the nature of the building and the heavy desk layout in the Operations Center, another challenge we faced was the fact that a lot of the power and data came up through the floor. There were hundreds of floor boxes involved in the construction, making it difficult to lay everything out without walls and come up under the desks. We used a GPS-driven Trimble system to help lay things out and install them in the right place (as opposed to the older approach of using strings coming off steel columns, which is time-consuming and can lead to inaccuracies). We’d used Trimble a little bit before this job, but we found that it added a lot of value to a project of this complexity,” he said.

Enhancing the project through prefab

As they worked through construction of the GCI’s electrical infrastructure, the Schuler-­Haas team saw a great opportunity to incorporate certain fabricated products.

“As part of a peer group of six electrical contractors around the country, we were first introduced to the concept of prefab about 15 years ago,” Streicher said. “At that point, prefab looked good on paper but could be challenging, and there was also a fear that it would obsolete some electricians. 

“In the last few years, however, we’ve seen more advantages of prefab and more and more manufacturers have entered that market with viable solutions. As a result, we’ve engaged in more internal prefab practices. [We] just rented a new facility near our office to support this activity because we’ve seen the value of prefab on our jobs, and we also still look to manufacturers like Eaton to supplement what we do and help improve on the process.

“There’s a nationwide shortage of skilled labor right now, so the more products we can prepare in a prefabricated scenario, the better we’ll be able to spread tasks out over the course of a job instead of everything needing to be done at once,” he said. “Having assemblies ready to go reduces installation time and makes the most productive use of our different tiers of crew members.”

Schuler-Haas engages a foreman and project manager to ensure that whatever is being fabricated will work for the situation at hand.

Streicher and his team ultimately called on Eaton for its fabricated, in-wall rough-in products.

“There were quite a few multi-outlet assemblies involving receptacles, data ports, security ports, electrical outlets, etc.—often 2–3 of these ganged together on a wall,” Streicher said. “So we set up a relationship with Eaton in which we gave each type of configuration an ID number and told them how many of each type we needed. In the end, there were about 400–500 assemblies representing 10 different configurations that we ordered, and Eaton had all of the technical data on them and constructed them for us. They then shipped them to us with the correct ID number, essentially kitting and identifying them by room for us so that the foreman on the job knew where they went.”

“Meeting project timelines and budgets can hinge on fast and efficient delivery and installation of power system components,” said Michael McManus, global platform manager at Eaton, who added that industry experts estimate that fabricating materials can increase worker productivity by upward of 30% through reductions in material handling on the job site and rough-in time. 

“With the current shortage of skilled labor, prebuilt products can help close the capacity gap and can also integrate accessories and components into a single package, making it easier and faster to ensure that the right accessories and components are readily available on-site,” he said.

According to McManus, Eaton Ruff-In electrical assemblies deliver pre-­engineered and pre-assembled combinations of mounting method, outlet box, plaster ring, devices and leads to simplify branch wiring installation, which is useful in projects involving repetitive installations.

“This flexible prefabricated solution allows contractors to allocate skill sets to better match job requirements while eliminating material ‘piles’ and inefficient searching for pieces and parts at the job site,” he said. “The prefabbed assemblies also help reduce overages and scrap, including expensive wire and cable, and deliver direct labor savings over traditional ‘stick-build’ wiring methods for improved job site efficiency.”

Right equipment, time and place

“On this project, where electricians were often working in the 10-degree temperatures that are common for Rochester in February, Schuler-Haas wanted to make it easy for team members on the ground to install equipment quickly and accelerate the process,” McManus said. “Our mutual goal was to ensure that the right equipment was in the right place at the right time to promote the utmost in project efficiency and enable a standardized, repeatable solution that could be applied on-site in an assembly-­line fashion.

“The project required about 500 rough-in assemblies, but if the conventional approach were used with all of the rough-ins assembled on-site, Schuler-Haas would have had to order 1,000 connectors, mud rings and more (as those are the typical quantities those materials are packaged in), resulting in overages in materials and far more on material handling to be boxed, shipped and returned,” McManus said. “By using prefabricated assemblies, overages and related administration time were avoided and exactly what was needed on the job was delivered.”

Stellar results

Streicher and his team are thrilled with the project’s results and their fabrication efforts.

“Our colleagues at Eaton were easy to work with and all of the products were delivered accurately,” Streicher said. “We’ve had situations with other manufacturers where we get boxes delivered full of the wrong products, which is frustrating and time-consuming, but Eaton did a first-class job supporting us with their assemblies and probably saved us 500 hours, or the equivalent of $40,000 in labor costs.”

“Schuler-Haas kept the RIT building construction on schedule with an emphasis on quality,” McManus said. “Overall, Schuler-Haas’ approach and collaboration with Eaton delivered in critical ways by reducing the risk of delays, improving order accuracy, eliminating material waste and improving coordination between the field and fabrication.”

“We completed the project on time and on budget, and RIT is extremely pleased with their cutting-edge new facility,” Streicher said. “More and more students are enrolling in their cybersecurity program and RIT may expand that facility in the future, which we’d be proud and excited to help support.”

Among lessons learned, Streicher said that this project helped his company embrace next-level technology to construct buildings more efficiently. 

“At Schuler-Haas, we welcome new technology and practices and pride ourselves on our ability to tackle more complex and higher-­tech projects and take ourselves to the highest level,” he said. “RIT is one of the best technical/engineering schools in the country, and this project is great to have on our resume. It gave us outstanding experience and positioned us well for other high-profile projects just like this.”

Header image: The layout of the ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute’s Operations Center required the Schuler-Haas team to bring much of the power and data up through the floor.

Schuler-Haas Electric Corp. / Rochester institute of technology