CASE STUDY BIG ROLE FOR BMS AT BA’S GIANT CARGO CENTRE

Trend controls are to be found in some very big buildings, and they don’t come much bigger than

British Airways’ vast state-of-the-art cargo centre at Heathrow. Installed within the £250million

centre is a £1million Trend building management system. Incorporating over 3km of network

cabling, the system has a particularly extensive monitoring role. It monitors not only the HVAC

plant that it is responsible for controlling but also the other building services systems, including

lighting, fire detection and security.

BA’s New World Cargocentre

represents the Company’s largest ever

single investment outside aircraft.

Featuring the very latest in materials

handling technology, the heavily

automated facility is designed to cope

with over 800,000 tonnes of cargo

every year. Adjacent to it is a 6300m2

business centre.

Trend controllers were chosen for this

facility due to their flexibility. The i/o

configuration of Trend controllers

allows them to cope with a variety of

applications, including monitoring only.

Their flexibility also allows Trend

controllers to cope with the different

environmental conditions required by

the Cargo and Business Centre. Open

areas require the controlled supply of

tempered air, whilst the self-contained

parts of the facility, which include a

perishables store and – projecting from

the front of the building – five office

‘pods’, require full air conditioning.

Trend IQ intelligent outstations

maintain the required conditions for

each area of the Cargo and Business

Centres by controlling and monitoring

all the air handling units, as well as the

boilers, chillers and certain other plant.

A Trend supervisor enables the

facilities management team to view

environmental conditions in different

parts of the Centre and monitor the

operation and status of the HVAC plant

and a range of other equipment – such

as HV and LV switchgear, lift motors,

the lighting control system PC and the

fire and intruder alarm systems.

Immediately a fault is detected the

Trend supervisor displays and prints

out an alarm. Also viewable through

the supervisor are system logged

readings from gas, electricity and

water meters.

The central monitoring facility which

the Trend supervisor provides is very

important in a building the size of the

Cargocentre; without it, maintenance

personnel would have to physically

check plant on a regular basis, which

would simply be too time consuming.

The system also links via modem to a

supervisor in the system’s installer.

Through this unit the installer’s

engineers will be able to remotely

investigate – and even correct – faults

relating to HVAC operation.

The IQ controllers and main supervisor

are divided into five local area

networks, which link to a LonWorks

internetwork (connection is via Trend

Lon-based routers). As well as serving

as a communications ‘backbone’ for

the Trend system, the LonWorks

provides the building with an open

network to which other services could

be connected in the future.

Trend Control Systems LimitedP.O. Box 34, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 2YF, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1403 211888 Fax: +44 (0)1403 241608 www.trend-controls.com

The overall flexibility of the Trend

building management system will allow

it to be readily adapted or extended to

meet any future control and monitoring

requirements.

British Airways is a major user of Trend

controls, which can be found in many

buildings at Heathrow and Gatwick.