Matalan HQ – BCIA Technical Innovation of the Year 2015

Project Type: Commercial, Retail

Technical Innovation of the Year

Project Details: The project covered the new construction of Matalan’s headquarters in Knowsley. The build and renovation works included a new three-storey office block, warehousing, gate houses, transport offices, mock-up shop and conference/training facility for the clothing and homeware retailer. The office was built on a 15-acre site. Impact have been involved with the design, installation and commissioning of the HVAC control system from Stage D working with the consultants, Hannan Associates and the client.

The BMS fully controls all HVAC equipment across the buildings, linked together on a single dedicated network to provide efficient, demand based control visible to a central server. The primary HVAC equipment includes nine boilers, absorption & air cooled chillers, UFH, AHU & VRF with controls set up for the future CHP works.

The BMS controls chilled beams, LHW circuits, VAV, FCU, roof damper ventilation, trench heating and UFH to achieve temperature and CO2 levels over 150+ separate zones. Primary supply humidly is controlled with condensation sensing ensuring levels are not exceeded in the space.

Impact have been exceptional onsite, with total BEMS project delivery, in-depth knowledge of all the HVAC specialist systems, together with a great team spirit, working with all the trades on the build which ensured the client was able to witness a complete system at handover including historical data demonstrating the efficient operation of the various systems. Impact also played a huge role in providing solutions to onsite issues as they surfaced during construction. – Kevin Sykes (Director) A&B Engineering Ltd.

Project Technical Details: We have worked closely with Hannan Associates and the client to develop a design which uses distributed zoning controls using efficient methods to keep energy use to a minimum while meeting the client requirements.

Technical advances achieved in this design included using the chilled water return from the 600+ chilled beams to serve the AHU to pre-heat the air whilst cooling the water for the chilled circuit. During optimum times of the year the controls are operating to chill the water down to the required levels by pre-heating primary air. In addition heat is reclaimed from the air-cooled chiller to heat the DHW calorifier. This has meant that for large parts of the year the heat requirements are met without operating boilers.

The ventilation is zoned on a floor by floor basis as well as a zone by zone basis. This means ventilation is only provided to area while occupied and when the CO2 sensors dictate. The AHU pressure sensors ensure the fans are backed off to meet the reduced demand from the building.

Over 100 sub-meters are monitored at the Trend 963 head-end. Impact have worked collaboratively with the project team to develop an energy metering strategy which brings back several buildings energy meters to a central position allowing the user to easily analyse half hourly data in a way to identify potential energy savings.

Project Outcome: Impact have taken the emphasis from fault indication being located in unoccupied plant room areas and provided Matalan with alarm indication panels at strategic places around the 15-acre site including security gate houses, receptions and manned areas. In addition the alarms are split into priority and set up to be emailed to the relevant staff depending on location and severity of the fault. All BEMS information is visible on the site-wide server software.

Cost and maintenance of the controls system is helped by the distributed controls design. Each area controlled has a networked local Trend controller. This ensures that all sensors, valves, switches and outputs are all wired locally keeping down costs while fault finding and maintenance is kept to a local area with reduced time. Impact provided layout documentation giving the user easy understanding as to where each of the controls equipment is wired to/from.

The graphics have been split into two definitive sections. There is a section for ease of use for non-engineers to follow a building layout to identify areas of interest viewing temperatures and status whilst other areas of the graphics allow the engineer to drill down to the more technical pipework valve layouts to interrogate the system. Commissioned values have been added to the graphics to inform the client of the setting to which the system was designed to operate at.