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St Thomas' plant rooms

Connor Felstead • 19 March 2023

St Thomas' plant rooms emergency monitoring, and evolving smart controls

Background

Expanding the working environments of where the mesh is strong, St Thomas' hospital have upgraded some of their plant rooms and Lift management rooms to a smarter solution.

Challenge

The trust engaged with a contractor in replacing their very dated T8 lift management rooms and adjacent plant rooms to a more energy efficient and smarter alternative. With a combination of frequently moving parts and rapid airflow of differing temperatures; special consideration needed to be taken into account from a control's perspective.

Solution

The first major win was implementing a wide range of LED swap outs with compliant emergency lighting to ensure the areas were well lit, energy efficient and most importantly safe in the event of a power cut. With these areas being building-critical, any loss of light is not acceptable.

To combat the varied environment, a combination of all things smart was utilised. PIRs, motion sensors, microwave sensors, time clocks and volt-free switching were implemented to ensure places were well lit when they were meant to be; and false triggering could not happen- while lights cannot be left on while works are not being done.

Benefits

As with all hospitals, a 24-hour site doesn't stop- so anytime lights can be off while not in use is an immediate positive when it comes to energy consumption. The combination of sensors allows the areas mentioned to be controlled in full, all the while data is fed back to the Lumitel dashboard so the end client can see when the works are taking place, how long they take and where exactly areas are being used. This, in the long term, allows the end client to gauge the frequency of usage as well as the frequency or maintenance for the equipment while simultaneously allowing the devices to self-test and ensure maximum energy savings.

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