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Securing historical buildings

Honeywell Building Management System brings World Heritage Site into the 21st century.

The Buda Castle marks the place where Budapest was founded. As the most prominent building in Hungary’s capital city, it dominates the skyline. Today it is a World Heritage site and the home to a number of museums and art galleries including the Ludwig Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery and the Budapest Natural History Museum.

Castle curators tread a fine line between conserving their country’s heritage and using modern automation control technology to get the best results. How to protect and present the ancient buildings and the priceless collections within them, yet bring the building management and security systems into the 21st century? This was one such dilemma. They wanted to improve energy efficiency, comfort and security, even though it meant renewing mechanical equipment and installation of structured network cabling. They also wanted to cut operating costs.

The Honeywell solution

Honeywell’s solution spanned the southern part of the castle complex – the six buildings that form part of the former Royal Palace now functioning as museums, libraries and theatres. The Ludwig Collection, The National Gallery, Budapest Historical Museum, Széchenyi National Library, and Castle Theatre are all housed in this area.

Honeywell faced big, somewhat unusual challenges in delivering the project. As a listed World Heritage site, all works had to be undertaken in accordance with strict regulations. Unusually thick walls, large distances, protected archaeological sites and historical buildings added to the problem. In some cases international specialists were employed.

For example, Austrian drilling technology was used to bore a cable duct into a wall more than 6 m thick. At other times, Honeywell used alpine techniques for the cabling works.

In order to preserve the fabric of the buildings yet bring about improved energy efficiency, only those mechanical parts critical to reliable and efficient operation were renewed. This meant pipelines, actuators and heat meters being installed or replaced on-site. To further reduce the operating costs, the operation and maintenance of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) substations were automated to run at low-cost periods.

A spokesperson for Budai Vargondnoksag Kht said, “We did not find any operational errors during a year-long trial period. During this time we took the opportunity to compare the performance of the Honeywell building management system with competitive offerings. This exercise only served to underline our choice – that we had chosen the right company – the right technology and the right people – for the job.”

Castle staff engineers also liked the Honeywell solution which is based on an integrated building management platform. After minimal training from Honeywell they were able to customise the system to their own needs.

Plans are in progress for Honeywell to extend the castle’s security system to include photo identity, access control, time and attendance monitoring and fire and alarm. A maintenance contract has been signed and a separate cooling mechanism has been integrated into the building management system.

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