Nova forms an integral part of major regeneration plans worth £2.2 billion for the area around Victoria station. Of the five buildings, Nova South- 7A and Nova North- 6B are two architecturally distinct office buildings delivered as part of the first phase of development. The basement has space for car parking and loading bays for servicing the buildings. It is also home to an energy centre that delivers low-carbon heating and cooling throughout the development. The Nova building- 5 is a residential building, containing 170 private residential apartments.

The BMS system within the Nova development is controlled via the Niagara Tridium AX supervisory software. The software support and licencing for the AX supervisory software is approaching end of life and must be upgraded and transitioned to the Niagara N4 software.  The BMS control system is a Distech based Tridium system incorporating OMRON PLC Technology, Honeywell LON IO modules, Distech Niagara Direct Input Output (NDIO) and EC-BOS6 AX controllers.

Hive delivered this BMS upgrade from inception, understanding the specific requirements for a 24/7, 365 day operational building and designing a phased upgrade path utilising Tridium N4 technology. The initial Hive feasibility study highlighted a significant single point of failure with the main servers. Hive were able to rectify this by separating the servers and locating them within fault tolerant locations, each running in parallel the supervisory headend software.

The scope required to upgrade the main plant control controllers, BMS network architecture and BMS supervisory servers. The main challenge was the lack of complete O&M information and the closed protocol nature of the base build BMS installation. The site had experienced major failures on some of the main plant controllers and upon investigation it was identified the controller’s RAM was exceeding the specified limit. As part of the works all the new JACE 8000 controllers were specified to accommodate both the Landlords main control plant and the additional Tenant CAT B installed plant.

The main challenges included the step change in the way tenants access the BMS with strict protocol on cyber security Hive developed a philosophy and scheme to enable remote access and protect the Common Network System whilst saving the tenants in terms of ongoing licencing costs.