Our story
Perth & Kinross Council are a leader in the public sector when relating to Building Management Systems (BMS). We see this as one of the key drivers to reduce energy consumption, improving thermal comfort and reducing carbon emissions. There has been an ongoing improvement programme of BMS since 2014 with a full re-development commencing in 2019, and being complete in 2021.
In 2014 we had around 50 sites connected remotely with heating, ventilation and hot water controlled through a remote platform – Siemens DESIGO Insight. This allowed site schedules to be added with controlled set points all controlled remotely by the Energy Team in Property Services.
In 2019 the Energy Team went out to tender and appointed Complete Energy Controls on a 5 year contract. The main scope was to upgrade our current BMS platform to the new Siemens product DESIGO CC and continue to develop PKCs BMS. The new platform has improved connectivity allowing a wide range of control systems to be remotely connected with a more user-friendly re-developed front end. The new addition of energy reports and improved trend logging have allowed improved analysis of site performance. The specification for tender also focussed on updating software to improve plant performance with scope to develop a site-by-site plan with the successful contractor. A remote system was also added to reduce scope 3 emissions and allow further troubleshooting of system performance remotely. These works were all complete in summer 2021 with now over 80 sites connected remotely and an aim to have 100 by 2025. A target annual saving of over 2,000 MWh and 200 tonnes CO2.
Our advice
To get the desired outcome it is so important to populate the tender with as much information as possible. This requires speaking to other teams and departments and shaping the specification to suit all parties. The tender must focus on a quality over price approach as it is so important to have a contractor who has the same drive and capability to meet your end goal. The targets are ambitious but no one said this was going to be easy.
Our metrics
We have data to analyse how sites are performing individually and also engage with building users. We have a team of 7 that do this on a daily basis.
