Site wide upgrade of obsolete BMS system with a Trend Controls System, project consisted of the retrofitting of 29 control panels, replacing Allen Bradley system.

Founded in 1856, the National Portrait Gallery tells the story of Britain through portraits, using art to bring history to life and explore living today.

The Allen Bradley system was obsolete and suffering from multiple hardware failures; the system couldn’t facilitate modern tasks for maintenance and elementary reporting.

Lack of information/visualisation of data to the end client, making decision-making and fault-finding difficult and a challenge for the on-site team to carry out basic checks and understand the health of the plant and environmental conditions.

Single point of failure in that a single engineer held the system backups and knowledge.

Sharing information about the environmental conditions with shareholders, the insurance team, and the conservation team was behind a paywall due to the lack of visibility and the requirement for a single engineer to provide the required information.

A specification was developed with the MEP consulting engineer (Max Fordham) to provide a new description of operation, emphasising system flow for all users and an advanced strategy for fault-finding and alarm prioritisation.

The specification for the project required the use of Trend IQ4 and associated IO modules throughout to provide a level of future-proofing in that multiple engineers/companies can support the product in the foreseeable future to easily obtain spares in the event of failure.

The new BMS provided the on site mechanical team and estates management an easily accessible visualisation of the building, plant and environmental conditions
where alarms can be checked and acknowledged, sensor data can be viewed and downloaded, and a simple navigation interface that doesn’t require specific mechanical or IT knowledge to find the requirement information.

The new BMS has provided the infrastructure for the following ongoing projects: