Boston Public Market is a 28,000-square-foot, indoor marketplace for locally sourced groceries and specialty products, complete with a 3,200-square-foot demonstration kitchen. Working with construction manager Lee Kennedy Co. and Vanderwell Engineers as the electrical engineer, Bennett Electrical Inc., Quincy, Mass., installed the new electrical system.


“The scope of our work was to provide full power, lighting and fire alarm to the first floor of the Boston Public Market renovation,” said Lawrence Hall, senior project manager, Bennett Electrical. “This work involved major distribution feeder runs that had to be coordinated in the ceiling, through an intricate lighting design, and with new—as well as existing—mechanical and structural work.”


The electrical contractor’s greatest test was the intricate conduit installation in the ceiling for feeders and branch circuits and the installation of the complex lighting scheme for the market floor.


Hall said it had to be effective for distribution and aesthetically pleasing. It also could not interfere with lighting in a unique canopy application.


Rich Carmody, Bennett Electrical’s general foreman, supervised the work. The contractor sketched out much of the floor and ceiling layout using CAD.


The power for the project was to come from an existing local utility transformer vault. Bennett Electrical was responsible for ordering and installing feeder busway to this vault within a tight time frame, with less than a quarter-inch mistake tolerance, all while simultaneously providing temporary power to an important government tenant in the building.


Bennett Electrical was able to complete the project on time and with a good working relationship with the general contractor.