Rising power prices and increased government legislation have pushed energy management to the fore, with public and private users implementing an array of measures to cut consumption, bills and carbon emissions. For many organisations this process starts with an energy audit to pinpoint how much power is being used and where and sub-metering has become an established, straight-forward and effective method of doing this.

In today’s enterprise landscape organisations are rarely limited to a single business function or indeed a single market. Many companies in the facilities management and building services industries are expanding their target markets along with the range of services that are delivered via an increasingly flexible and mobile workforce.

Designing truly smart buildings will require a complete rethink in how we do things, especially in regards to project management, says Mark Tallent of Crestron. In fact if we’re aiming for fully integrated technology we need to go back to the drawing board.

There are many new technologies and products currently on the market (and in development) that help reduce the impact of a building and its occupants on the environment. This is extremely welcome but the challenge for the building services engineer is to bring these elements together to create a truly integrated building technology system. Ultimately, this system will satisfy from a technological point of view and also meet the needs of occupants and facilities managers over the buildings lifetime.

With budgetary cuts across the sector there is a real pressure on building service engineers to closely manage their cashflow for better business health. This translates into all areas of business operations; from estimating and financial accounting to managing time and labour costs for engineers – to deliver on KPIs and to ensure jobs are completed in a timely manner with material costs accounted for.

Over the last three years we have brought news of the latest data centre and IT cooling systems which Trox AITCS has brought to the market. Here we look at the latest development designed to maximise a CRAC system and provide an expandable solution.