Aberdeen City Council's recent relocation to Marischal College
on Broad Street is a landmark development for many reasons.
Predominantly, this is because the council's new corporate
headquarters is a showcase project for sustainability, one that
features Priva BMS technology at its core.
Occupying an imposing position that commands the Aberdeen
skyline, Marischal College has origins dating back to 1593. The
current structure is around a century old and is in fact the
world's second largest granite building behind only 'The Escorial'
in Madrid, making it the ultimate symbol of the 'Granite City'. But
the council's relocation is about far more than mere prestige or
having nice new offices, it centres on environmental responsibility
and the opportunity to utilise renewable energy.
Energy capital of Europe
The previous headquarters at St Nicholas House was constructed
in 1966 with a 30-year lifespan and did not harbour a future for
the council. Furthermore, compared with redevelopment of St
Nicholas House, new construction on a green-field site or Marischal
College, the latter provided the best-value option, as well as
adding weight to the city's ambition of becoming "the energy
capital of Europe into the future". This groundbreaking project
paves the way for the renewal of the city centre, the creation of a
new civic focal point and brings back into use a building that has
been lying vacant for some years.
The £68 million scheme required the demolition of the interior
of the building and the creation of 174,000 sq ft of modern office
space over four floors for up to 1,300 council staff.
All granite elevations of the building were retained.
The tender issued by the appointed team of architects engaged
consulting engineers, Wallace Whittle of Glasgow, which had the
responsibility of designing the internal building services complete
with woodchip-fuelled, biomass-served, environmentally sustainable
heating system. However, as one of the UK's most northerly cities,
Aberdeen is notorious for its harsh climate on the shores of the
North Sea. With this in mind, suitable back-up for the biomass
boiler was required, and here Wallace Whittle turned to Priva
partner, Campbell Control Services, a specialist in automatic
building control systems.
Boiler-house controls
Two back-up gas boilers were deployed to support the biomass
system in the event of a fault or empty fuel situation. Both
boiler-houses located on the lower ground floor feature panels with
Priva Compri HX8E BMS controllers their heart, as well as
touch-screen display, U18 universal input modules, DI12S digital
input modules and RO6MS digital input/relay output modules.
The boilers are arranged to operate in a step-controlled manner
to achieve the required boiler return temperature, with the set
point available to the operator via the Priva BMS. When required,
the boilers are sequenced on a 'first on/last off' basis. This
provides a continuously rotating boiler sequence, ensuring the
boiler modules have equal duty operation.
Heating and Cooling
The integration of Priva technology at Marischal College extends
far beyond control panels for back-up gas boilers.
For example, the heating and cooling of the building is provided
by individual ceiling-mounted water source heat pumps which
integrate with the Priva system for time/temperature control.
Priva's Compri HX4's aid the supply and regulation of water to
these pumps, populating 16 control panels located across all
floors. Each heat pump has the capability of transferring excess
heat to cooler parts of the building. This helps minimize the
building total energy demand. In addition, the main heat rejection
plant which consists of adiabatic coolers - thus maximizing cooling
by fresh air - are also monitored and controlled by the Priva
system.
Priva Throughout
The Priva system oversees many additional control functions
including the monitoring and control of various air handling units
and ancillary ventilation plant across the building. It also
provides monitoring of the MCCB status on the main and south
switchboards. In total, more than 9000 integration points are
associated with this project, controlling a long list of plant such
as: 643 fan coil units, domestic hot water system, roof-located air
handling units for ventilation and WC extraction ventilation. Input
and output status is provided either via Modbus or BACnet networks
to the Priva controllers.
Roof-located riser control panels also feature Priva HX4
technology, as do the control panels for the building's meeting
room and main communications room.
Incoming electricity, gas and water metering is also monitored
by Priva BMS technology, while in terms of alarm and status
monitoring, the BMS software will send a text or email to the
nominated maintenance engineer. Campbell Controls supplied a
desktop PC and software package called TC Vision to allow
interrogation/alterations of all the Priva controlled plant from
one central point located in FM room. Priva's TC Vision software
has access - read and/or write - to all 9000+ BACNet and
Modbus integration points. This can be carried out via any desktop
PC within the building's intranet system, or remotely via an
internet connection.
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