Sectors
Apex Arc Flash Engineering provides focused power system and arc flash services for facilities where electrical safety and reliability are central to daily operations: hospitals, campuses, laboratories, data centers, public facilities, and commercial and industrial sites. We work with owners, facility managers, and design teams across several key sectors.
Based in Santa Clara, serving the San Francisco Bay Area and facilities across Northern California.
Facilities We Work In
Apex supports owners, facility managers, electrical contractors, and design teams in evaluating electrical-system hazards, fault conditions, and protective-device performance across a range of facility types. Our engineering studies are developed in accordance with applicable project requirements and to support OSHA electrical-safety obligations, NFPA 70E practices, IEEE 1584-2018 calculation methods, and applicable California Electrical Code requirements.
Commercial and Industrial
We serve office buildings, retail and mixed-use properties, warehouses, manufacturing plants, and commercial kitchens with electrical equipment. Service upgrades and tenant improvements are the usual triggers, and both can change the available fault current that CEC 110.24 requires to be marked on service equipment. In industrial plants the focus is worker safety at motor control centers, equipment protection, and avoiding unplanned outages, with recommendations built into maintenance and capital plans across every building in a portfolio.
Hospitals and Healthcare
We support hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, surgical centers, imaging suites, and medical office buildings with layered normal and emergency power systems. Projects under HCAI review need the short circuit study, the coordination study, and the arc flash results to agree, including PIN 70 electrical coordination and CEC 517.31(G) coordination beyond 0.1 second. Generator paralleling gear and transfer switches are where incident energy most often surprises facilities staff, so we model the essential electrical system in every operating mode.
Data Centers and High-Tech
Colocation, enterprise, and hyperscale data centers, along with semiconductor and advanced manufacturing sites, run on distribution where an uncoordinated trip is an outage. We model utility service, generator plants, UPS systems, static transfer switches, and PDUs, and evaluate arc flash at UPS output in both bypass and inverter operation, because available fault current changes with the operating mode. Field work fits maintenance windows and change control, and Santa Clara sites on Silicon Valley Power are minutes from our office.
Laboratories and Life Sciences
Biotech, pharmaceutical, and research laboratories combine sensitive process loads with standby power for freezers, incubators, vivaria, and exhaust systems. Multi-tenant lab buildings change with every fit-out, and each tenant improvement can move available fault current, clearing times, and the labels on shared equipment. We keep studies current through successive fit-outs rather than redoing them each time, and coordinate protection so a fault in one suite does not take down the experiment running next door.
Higher Education and Research
Universities, colleges, and research campuses often have medium-voltage loops, central plants, building unit substations, and decades of renovation layered on top of one another. We develop campus models that integrate new work into existing studies, verify equipment spanning several generations of manufacturers, and schedule field work around academic calendars and shutdown windows. Documentation is built for facilities staff to maintain over time, so each new project starts from a current model and accurate one-line diagrams rather than from zero.
Government and Public Utilities
County and municipal agencies rely on secure, reliable power for jails, courts, public safety buildings, emergency operations centers, and water and wastewater treatment plants. Detention facilities bring controlled access and escort requirements; treatment plants and pump stations bring large motors, drives, and motor control centers where operators actually work. We coordinate with owner representatives and design teams so studies reflect real priorities such as controlled egress, secure zones, critical communications, and public specifications including CSI Section 26 05 73.
What types of facilities does Apex Arc Flash Engineering serve in the San Francisco Bay Area?
Apex Arc Flash Engineering provides PE-led arc flash, short circuit, coordination, and single line diagram services for hospitals, skilled nursing, and other healthcare facilities, universities and research campuses, laboratories and life sciences buildings, data centers, semiconductor and high-tech manufacturing sites, government and justice facilities, municipal water and wastewater plants, and commercial and industrial properties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and California. We are based in Santa Clara.
Discuss a Project in Your Sector
If you are planning an arc flash study, need updates to an existing model, or want a review of contractor work for any of these sectors, we can outline a scope and fee. Click the button below to get started.