Flexible BEMS for Basildon hospital

One of England’s first 10 NHS Foundation Trusts, Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides an extensive range of acute medical services to some 400,000 people across south-west Essex in an area covering Basildon and Thurrock, together with parts of Brentwood and Castle Point. In the past few years, over £60 million has been invested in expanding and modernising the Trust’s Basildon University Hospital, which is also an associate teaching hospital.

Hemel Hempstead-based Comfort Controls, a building management controls specialist, manufacturer and installer of motor control centres, and electrical contractor, installed the hospital’s original Schneider Electric Building Energy Management System (BEMS) over 15 years ago, for the primary purpose of automatically switching mechanical plant on and off, as well as allowing fault monitoring from a central location. Over the years Comfort Controls has maintained both the BEMS and a separate access control system, also from Schneider, keeping Basildon University Hospital up to date with the latest technology to meet evolving requirements. Six years ago the company upgraded the existing BEMS to Schneider Electric’s Andover Continuum system, which monitors and controls both the internal ‘building climate’, and a host of security elements.

Schneider says of the system: “Integrating access control, video surveillance, HVAC, and lighting control, into one system reduces the amount of wiring and hardware needed, thus drastically reducing overall system costs.” Comfort Controls has also provided the hospital’s staff, and the energy manager in particular, with ongoing training, to interrogate, and modify the operation of, the Continuum system ‘for maximum efficiency’.