NY-14-C016 -- Building Control Technologies: Campus BAS Upgrade PDF

The 1.2 million-sq.-ft. research and development (R&D) campus of one energy company in Illinois required significant upgrades to its 30-year-old Building Automation System (BAS). The campus' seven main buildings were built in the 1960s and 70s and feature refining pilot plants, labs, office spaces, warehouses and campus utilities, while the campus call center building, built in 1999, is located less than a mile from the main site. All together, these buildings contained an assortment of control systems varying from original pneumatic controls, dating back to the campus' construction, to several generations of direct digital controls (DDC), many of which had exceeded the age of necessary replacement.

Working together, MEP engineers Environmental Systems Design, Inc., Chicago, and the campus' facilities manager, CBRE, began a multi-phase project in 2010, valued at over $10 million, to improve the reliability, redundancy and robustness of the existing control systems. The phases of work include:

Phase I - Install new first tier (Ethernet level) network components including application servers, network switches and network controllers
Phase II - Replace outdated second tier (field bus level) legacy controllers and install new DDC controls on pneumatic and standalone equipment
Phase III - Incorporate dedicated graphical user interface webpages and additional field devices to improve monitoring capabilities and efficiencies for Business Unit (BU) systems

The energy company has been involved every step of the process, through weekly design and implementation meetings, in which any number of the 20 individual BUs on campus participate. This has enhanced the project by gaining buy-in from on-site staff and gathering input for a smooth transition. The project team engaged a third party commissioning agent for added quality assurance as well.

The BAS upgrade has faced a number of challenges, including working around a 24/7/365 operational facility, managing a large quantity of monitoring and control points (with over 15,000 in the system) and dealing with equipment that is serving critical facilities. Despite these challenges, Phase I was executed flawlessly in 2012, without any business continuity issues. The BAS upgrade is currently in Phase II with an anticipated completion in 2015.