CDW Headquarters, Lincolnshire, IL

CDW, a fast-growing Fortune 500 technology company, had employees spread across multiple facilities in the Chicago area. To support easier collaboration among departments, the firm decided to relocate and consolidate to the existing Tri-State International Office Center in Lincolnshire, Illinois, to fully occupy both of the center’s four-story towers.

CDW, which selected Syska Hennessy Group as an ICT partner on eight previous projects, retained us again for MEP, structured cabling and audiovisual design services.

The headquarters design required technically innovative and creative engineering, specifically for the new cafeteria space on the first floor. The cafeteria contains a full-cooking kitchen, which required our mechanical engineers to carve a pathway throughout the building’s infrastructure. We routed a black iron duct through the upper three floors of office space and then through the roof to exhaust this air from the kitchen downstairs. We also had to remove portions of the first-floor glass façade to create a secondary path for fresh air makeup to enter the cafeteria.

Our team designed a supplemental cooling system and stand-alone UPS for a new 10-cabinet server room within the building. Also critical to the success of this project is a new, glass-enclosed, three-story bridge that connects the two towers and allows CDW’s employees to easily move between them. Our engineers honored the architectural aesthetics of the bridge while still providing the required MEP systems.

Communication among the entire team was critical to coordinate drawings and timelines, and most importantly to stay on budget. Following the success of this headquarters renovation, we have continued to partner with CDW on multiple projects across their portfolio.

“This project presented many challenges which Syska tackled with creativity and innovative engineering.”
– Melissa Eyerman, Director of Transaction Management, CDW