Quayside Tower, Birmingham comprises of a two storey Podium, multi-story car park and seventeen storey lettable office accommodation. The primary HVAC plant is located on the seventeenth floor and in the Podium plantroom. The public health service plant is located in the basement tank room. Pipework and ductwork are transferred between floors via service risers and is routed on each floor level via ceiling floor voids. The building management system is an intelligent building controls system with central supervisory PC and hardware used to control and monitor the various systems. The platform is based on the now obsolete Trend 963 system architecture. A main inter-network wiring system is provided to connect each LAN via an inter-network node controller.

Hive were appointed to undertake a feasibility study, performance specification and carry out on site project management duties. Following the feasibility study and cost analysis the BMS was transitioned over to a Distech based BMS system with a new ICT backbone and incorporated energy metering and automatic reporting for billing purposes.

The Building Management System (BMS) controls and monitors the buildings engineering systems within Quayside Tower, Birmingham. The Trend 963 software was no longer in active development and was withdrawn from sale towards the end of 2019. They were large numbers of BMS controllers that are no longer supported by the manufacturer, and therefore these unsupported BMS controllers could fail and have a negative impact on the building operation. This project included the transition to a Distech building energy management system. The building benefited from a demand-based approach with revised BMS control strategies, modern graphics and zoning arrangements. The energy metering platform and hardware were upgraded as part of the works to enable automatic billing and energy analytics.

Hive and BGES identified energy efficiency savings as part of the validations which included VSD drives, additional sensors and feedback control cards to enable greater control whilst providing a short term payback from a small investment. The main challenges included overcoming the inherent issues with the base build MEP systems and missing record information. Hive provided the necessary system overviews as part of the initial feasibility study to enable the development of the Description of Operations and points schedules.