Beckhoff Automation is celebrating after becoming a finalist in the BCIA Awards 2016. The company entered its work at Gatwick Airport for the Technical Innovation of the Year – Projects category.
Karl Walker, Market Development Manager at Beckhoff Automation, said: “We are very pleased that this project has reached the finalist stage of the BCIA Awards. We worked closely with the client to achieve their requirements for the BEMS in this building, taking an innovative and unusual approach to the challenge.”
Beckhoff worked alongside expert system integrator Interior Automation to design and install a DALI lighting control solution with backwards compatibility with legacy infrastructure. The approach taken by the team ensures that future developments in the building energy management system (BEMS) for this building are quick, flexible and cost-effective to deploy.
“The Beckhoff/Interior Automation solution was never conceived to be simply a lighting control system. Lighting control was perceived to be an area for immediate improvement by the proactive client team,” continued Mr Walker, “but it was imperative that system platform formed the foundation of an extensible and future-proof BEMS solution.”
By using the latest industrial PC (IPC) technology, the range of the control systems is scalable from a stand-alone application device (e.g. lighting) all the way to multi-core devices capable of full building control. The system can now monitor energy usage directly at the electrical panels and has recently been enhanced to provide calculated energy consumption data to a new stakeholder within the customer’s team.
The Gatwick engineering team is now assured that their buildings are being populated with devices ready for connection to all on-site, off-site and Cloud-based IT infrastructure. The systems are IoT ready and are already setting the scene for implementation of advanced machine-learning derived algorithms that will be able to assist the BEMS 24-7 without human dependency.
The winners of the BCIA Awards 2016 will be announced on May 12th at a gala dinner at the Hilton Metropole in Birmingham.
