Building Management System

The building management system (BMS) is an overarching control system that is responsible for the automatic regulation and control of non-GMP facility subsystems, maintaining predefined parameters (or set points) and the control of their functionality. The major aim of the BMS is to guarantee the safety of facility operation, while also monitoring and optimizing the use and efficiency of its supervised subsystems to allow more efficient operation. Joules Tech have expertise on the major subsystems controlled by the BMS including:

HVAC System – The duct temperature, pressure, and humidity, as well as exhaust temperature are connected to the BMS, and if their value exceeds defined limits, an alarm is generated.
Central Fume Collection, Laminar Flow Units, Dust Collection System, Central Vacuum System, Heat blowers – The BMS monitors the performance of these systems, allowing for early identification of units requiring maintenance. Sudden breakdown would signal via alarms and then appropriate action can be taken to protect the product.
Technical Steam System – Should, for instance, the pressure or temperature in the piping system fall below the defined regulatory values for clean steam, the BMS shall trigger an alarm, indicating a threat to product quality.
Hot Water System and Central Heating – Temperature and pump control monitoring via the BMS allows for a proper functioning of hot water distribution through the facility.
Chilled Water System – Control of the facility chillers could be supervised by BMS to monitor proper behavior of the system in terms of water/coolant temperature control or pump control to assure proper distribution within the distribution loop.
Sprinkler System (for fire safety)
Electrical Monitoring System – The BMS may monitor the consumed electrical power and the state of main electrical switches.

With our Technology Offerings, we can do the following:

 – Monitoring and control of thermal energy storage systems

 – Web-enabled control and monitoring systems – BMS in combination with wireless monitoring and control systems will provide a significant improvement over the current systems in use. However, these systems do generate significant amounts of data that must be monitored, logged, and analyzed. In a commercial or industrial setting, the data gathered is presented to the facilities manager who analyses the data and makes operational decisions based upon the information that has been gathered. There is a growing market in software tools that provide an analysis of the monitored data and present it in a format that is easy and quick to understand. This is where technologies such as web dashboards are finding a market.

 – Web dashboards can monitor data from a wide variety of sources and then display these on-screen, much in the same format as the dashboard on an automobile presents information to the driver. The data is typically presented in a graphical and colored interface such that the facilities manager can quickly identify and address any issues or abnormalities in the operation of the system under their control. These dashboards present the gathered data in esthetically pleasing interfaces that are simple to use and easy to understand. In general, the effectiveness of these dashboards at enabling their end-users to make informed decisions about the energy usage patterns and requirements is still somewhat of a moot point (Turvey, 2013) as it is still the decisions made by the facilities manager that will be the main factor in determining how the system is operated.

Future developments in this area will see the decision on the optimum operation of the system being decided upon by the control units and the SMART control software that is incorporated within the units.