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When every second counts

A major controls project will always pose logistical problems that require innovative solutions, especially when it is critical to maintain services on a 24-hour basis throughout the project.

Having completed an unprecedented refurbishment, construction and controls overhaul project, with the help of Honeywell, Auckland City and Greenlane Hospitals have been transformed into some of the most technologically advanced, secure and environmentally friendly institutions in New Zealand.

Representing a fundamental re-organisation of the Auckland’s District Health Board’s staff and services, the hospitals now bring together the acute services of Auckland and Greenlane including the National Women’s Hospital into a single managed site, with links to Starship Children’s Health. When it was decided an upgrade was required, the Auckland District Health Board was set the challenge to build several new buildings, including the acute hospital, while simultaneously upgrading multiple existing facilities, without disrupting the ongoing patient services offered by the hospital. The project would involve three new construction projects and a major refurbishment programme for existing facilities across two sites. This included an upgrade of the central plants that supply water, electricity and gas to the entire hospital.

Another requirement was to streamline the management of the control systems over the two sites necessitating one cohesive management tool allowing hospital staff to check relevant operations from anywhere within either site and provide a way to reduce ongoing facility management expenditure. The project was to be ongoing and needed to facilitate future scalability, to include all facilities located on both the Grafton Road and Greenlane sites.

When putting the tender out to find a suitable technology partner to transform the hospitals, their multiple departments and sites into state-of-the-art, world-class institutions, The Auckland District Health Board knew the importance of the decision; the hospitals play a major part in people’s lives. Honeywell was chosen because it has proven capabilities in delivering large, complex projects on-time and on-budget. Given the 38 separate projects and an overall budget in excess of NZ$12 million, large project experience was essential. Honeywell’s Enterprise Building Integrator also offered the ability to integrate both hospital sites and allows for the new buildings to be integrated as the refurbishment project continues.

From the builder’s point of view, Honeywell offered a complete control solution, reducing the complexities associated with managing multiple sub-contractors. Honeywell’s scope of work on the site included the consolidation and delivery of its heating, ventilation and airconditioning, access control systems, closed circuit TV, intercom, nurse call, emergency power control, wandering patient/baby tracking, medical gas monitoring and the enterprise building integrator (EBI).

A bespoke solution

The EBI solution installed by Honeywell allows the operators to run and monitor the operation from any PC with the correct permissions on either site. This optimises plant utilisation and has proved extremely beneficial for the hospital in terms of managing the automation of all the systems across the sites, including the flexibility to interface to eight different third-party controllers across the two sites encompassing 12 buildings.

The control systems across both sites include 5000 nursecall nodes, 30 intercoms, 300 closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras and 80 CCTV monitors and an emergency power control and monitoring system. It is understood that this is the largest installation in the Pacific. The NZ developed intercom to CCTV interface is also managed by the EBI solution. This system is critical to the hospital for the general safety of patients and staff alike.

The 14 000-point heating, ventilation and airconditioning system installed includes a number of air handling return air systems to deliver energy savings as well as a more environmentally friendly use of energy resources.

Cost savings were a key component to the project. Cost savings came, primarily, from two different areas, energy savings and general operating expenses.

Part of delivering more efficient sources of energy included the lighting control scheme provided by Honeywell. By reviewing both hospitals to determine which areas were high and low traffic areas, and at what times, Honeywell was able to determine which areas would need occupancy sensors to limit the use of lighting in those areas. This has also helped the hospital to comply with environmental regulations.

“The Grafton Hospital site has a NZ$3,3 million power bill annually. Through the new systems Honeywell has implemented, lighting alone has saved us NZ$100 thousand per annum. This has meant that the installation of lighting control has paid for itself within 18 months.” said Ian Harper, building services manager at the Auckland District Hospital.

Another project that has proven valuable to the hospital is the co-generation scheme installed locally at the site. Co-generation reduces energy costs dramatically and all unused energy is returned into Auckland’s power grid.

Some of the benefits the hospital gained through the implementation of the Honeywell EBI solution include:

* Use of a structured cabling system that has virtually future-proofed each area, substantially reducing cabling costs now and into the future.

* Standardisation of spare parts reducing maintenance costs.

* Standardisation of training throughout the hospital; operators, managers and service staff are only required to learn one system; the customer IT department automatically backs up data to its servers meaning no additional operational people are required.

* One common pager interface for all alarms reducing the ongoing costs that would normally be associated with multiple line hire.

* All reports are available via the systems database.

* One access card type provides access to all sites, including the car park, meaning the management of the access control database is more efficient and more accurate.

Honeywell viewed its role in the exercise as that of a system integrator and project manager, working with architects, builders, consultants, medical staff and facility managers to ensure efficient processes and cooperation from the various parties involved. The project’s success was achieved because Honeywell was able to bring together the multiple stakeholders, uniting them in one common goal, to deliver a single solution on time, and on budget.

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