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alumni rofile
Aimee Lopez, BSCE ‘99 Cromwell Field at USC won’t look any different when it reopens in March 2005 for the Trojan Invitational Track Meet, but what lies beneath the green carpet of newly planted grass will be brand new, and cool. Ask Aimee Lopez, the Turner Construction project manager for a new 3-million gallon water storage tank built 40 feet below the field. The new thermal energy storage (TES) system brought her back to USC five years after her own graduation and has given her an opportunity to “thank USC” for her undergraduate education and early career success. “This is my mark on the world,” says the quick-spoken, petite Latina woman, beaming like a mother with her newborn child. “This is the culmination of all my education and training in engineering, something that will last forever and reflects the latest techniques in civil engineering. It’s a landmark and I’m very happy that I was able to work on the project.” Unbeknownst to spectators in the 3,000seat stadium, or to the athletes racing across its eight, 42-inch Rekortan surfaced lanes, the invisible water storage tank will be doing its
“Once this tank is buried, we never want to see it again,” Snouffer says. “This tank is designed to last forever,” Lopez adds. Measuring 123 feet in diameter and extending 40 feet underground, TES incorporates the latest construction materials and state-of-the-art design for water storage tanks. It was built with 2,310 cubic yards of pre-stressed concrete and 484,000 pounds of steel reinforcements to safeguard it from cracks or damage incurred during an earthquake. “The cold water will be circulated day and night to air conditioning systems all over campus, and used in some of the new buildings, such as Tutor Hall of Engineering and the new molecular biology building,” Snouffer explains. “The project actually expands the capacity of the campus’s existing chilled water system and reduces our utility costs in the long run.” TES consists of two components, according to Lopez: the chilled water storage tank under Cromwell Field and a new pump house in the basement of Grace Ford Salvatori Hall. Construction workers had to tunnel 17 feet underground to connect two 24-inch-diameter pipelines from the water tank to the pump house. “The warmer water coming back through these pipes will have a chance to chill overnight before it is recirculated,” Snouffer describes. “That allows us to shift a lot of our kilowatthour usage to off-peak hours — at night — when electricity is less expensive. That’s the beauty of the USC’s new thermal energy storage system under construction system.” in Cromwell Field. Sensors suspended thing: circulating chilled water to all of the air in the tank will monitor water temperature conditioning systems on campus, says Richard and height. A computer energy control Snouffer, director of Energy Services in USC’s management system will alert facilities facilities management office. TES is expected personnel if anything goes awry. to save USC about 4,500 megawatt-hours of Lopez has been overseeing the project electricity a year and roughly $400,000 from a trailer next to Grace Ford Salvatori Hall annually in electricity costs. since the start of the preconstruction phase last
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Aimee Lopez spring. Before the excavation could begin, construction crews had to build a bridge over the track for dump trucks, cranes and other heavy equipment moving on and off the field. “It would cost more than a million dollars to replace that track,” Snouffer says. “The bridge, which is about 4 feet above the track, turned out to be the most viable way of protecting it.” Lopez isn’t new to construction — she grew up with it. Her father, a migrant worker, built apartments in the small agricultural community of Huron, California, about 100 miles southwest of Fresno, when he was not out working in the fields. “Since I was very small, I always wanted to be a builder of some type,” she says. “At first, I was interested in architecture, but then, seeing my dad building apartments got me interested in construction. So I told him that one day I wanted to build the apartments for him. I wanted to make his dream come true.” Lopez liked science and math. In middle school, she was selected to enter an advanced summer school program — the CoalingaHuron House for the Academically Talented Development Program — for children gifted in math and science. She spent six summers on the UC Berkeley campus, taking collegelevel advanced placement courses. She applied to a variety of college engineering schools, including “some of the state schools, Cal Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, UCLA, Berkeley and some of the other UC continued on page 46