With 30 years’ worth of industry experience, Norman Disney & Young (NDY) senior associate Jonathan Clarke is the first to admit that control systems are not a favoured topic of conversation.
Mention controls, Jonathan Clarke says, and people get tend to get sweaty and frustrated. But controls, he says, are fundamental to the efficiency of buildings.
"They bind together your refrigeration systems and are the eyes, ears and brains of your building so good controls are essential,” he says. Clarke believes that one problem with today’s control systems is that they are based on software that people can't see.
There is no university degree in building management systems (BMS), and yet software engineers do not know the fundamentals of air conditioning.
"Getting skill sets right in this industry is a major problem, not just here but globally,” Clarke says. "If you dig deep down inside your control system, you will find that the software hasn’t changed for the past 15 years.
“That is why you have to tell the controls what to do. You can’t just set and forget or copy and paste from another building. This stuff needs to be constantly tuned.
“I get asked all the time, 'if I upgrade my BMS will my building be more efficient?' If you get a new BMS but copy engineering like for like and leave it, of course not.”
Another problem Clarke sees time and again is tight maintenance budgets, which have a serious effect on the successful operation of a building.
“When times are tough the maintenance budget goes out the window,” he says.
To prove his point, Clarke presented a case study in which he was able to achieve outstanding results. The project involved a poorly performing building built in the 1980s with a two-star energy rating.
The goal was to deliver a four-star rating but it was a fully occupied building with a a meagre budget.
"At the end of the day we spent 30 per cent of the budget sorting out maintenance problems,” he says. “This is common. Often a building will have good equipment – it just isn’t looked after or used correctly.”
Clarke says there is an attitude of “if the screen says its working it must be.”The project didn’t include new controls, only software adjustments.
The new software was introduced in January 2012 and by August the project had achieved 42 per cent in energy savings.
“We allowed every zone in the building to vote to get buy-in from the tenants,” he says. “Public education is important.”
Zone drifting is also important, as a one degree temperature shift can save up to 10 per cent in energy costs, he says.
“We discovered the damper actuator was broken, which cost $600 to replace but it was costing $17,000 per year and it had been like that for four years. This is what I mean about maintenance. A lot of buildings just need a little bit of love and attention.”
The new chillers were introduced next and this generated another 10 per cent in energy savings.
“Think about it: the cost of reworking software versus the cost of installing new chillers and you can see the savings we achieved.”
After a bit of tweaking and fine tuning, his team got the building to a five-star energy rating.
"This isn’t rocket science but the project shows what a difference controls can make when managed correctly.”