Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many commercial properties have been temporarily shut down with only key members of staff attending or visiting sites. In line with this reduction in usage and footfall, the services and equipment run times are being amended to reflect this. However, shutting down the services in a commercial building requires careful management to avoid numerous pitfalls with significant cost and safety implications for all stakeholders involved in the process. It is highly advisable to monitor systems to limit each risk, as well as ensuring that systems have responded to the changes made.

At Demand Logic, we have been acting on this; our tech was already geared up and ready for remote working, with our platform continuing to support your buildings as normal. We have been talking with our partners about the commonly occuring issues, developing our recommendations on what to look out for to help you to monitor operations and diagnose issues remotely, enabling you to plan effective remedial action. This could mean less time and/or fewer people required on site as well as ensuring compliance and appropriate operation of equipment and plant.

Here are our top five points for you to consider and how our platform detected them:

Health and Safety

The health and safety of those within our properties is, as always, of the utmost importance.

Domestic Hot Water

Although you may have only skeleton staffing of each site (where there is stored hot water for domestic services), if this is to be retained for staff then the water must be stored at temperatures to limit the growth of legionella, and where necessary pasteurised periodically. There will no doubt be continued statutory maintenance on the wet systems in line with the L8 ACOPs; however given the lack of ‘flushing’ on a daily basis due to limited numbers of occupiers, this should be closely monitored and tested to ensure compliance.

Inadequate ventilation

If there are a small number of teams in attendance on site or in your property, it would be worthwhile considering this, and not completely shutting off all major plant. Properties without any ventilation can quickly become ‘stuffy’ with a lack of fresh air supply which could have an impact on productivity, and more importantly health and wellbeing of those individuals. It is important to ensure adequate ventilation and temperature control in the areas which are occupied, even sparsely.

Using plant to limit the presence of Covid

Whilst ventilation may be necessary, it is important to eliminate recirculation and some other forms of heat recovery such as thermal wheels. These systems can prolong the presence of viruses in air systems inwittingly adding to the current issue. More guidance from CIBSE is here: https://www.cibsejournal.com/technical/preventing-covid-19-spreading-in-buildings/

Asset Damage

With a large amount of major plant being shut off to avoid needless energy cost, it is worth considering the potential damage that can be caused to offline major plant assets whilst in ‘outage’, such as:

• Major plant damage - Chillers, even when not operational, must have crankcase heaters operational and be run periodically to reduce the risk of seizure and leaks to seals. Such damage is time consuming and costly to repair.
• Seized pumps and fan motors - Non-operational electric motors and pumps can seize if not exercised regularly.
• Seized valves - Most commercial buildings have hundreds of small electrically operated valves to control the heating and cooling systems. These valves are prone to seizure if not exercised regularly. As they are generally hard to access, rectifying faults is time consuming and costly and could delay the reoccupation of a building post crisis due to work required in occupied spaces.
• Stagnated water in closed systems - Heating and cooling pipework is extensive throughout the buildings and contains a large volume of water. Left to stagnate, the water quality deteriorates and becomes prone to the growth of bacteria such as pseudomonas. This in turn can cause major, potentially irreparable, damage to pipes.

Through not monitoring the systems and their operation, several could be damaged for which replacement would cost, and potentially delay reoccupation of a building by many months.

Building fabric protection

Although it may seem tempting to completely turn every element of temperature control off to reap the savings in energy, this isn’t necessarily what is best for your building.

A sparsely occupied building will have limited internal heat gains. As we move into the hotter months, consideration should be given to controlling maximum internal temperatures, particularly in highly glazed commercial buildings to avoid increased temperatures for long periods of time which could lead to potential bacteria buildup and damage to plant/fabric.

If you are in colder climes, heating may be required to maintain minimum internal space temperatures to reduce relative humidity and the potential for mould growth and damage to equipment such as printers and photocopiers.

Energy Costs

Ensuring that only the necessary systems are operating is essential to minimise operating costs and carbon impact of a dormant building. In our experience, thus far, no building has yet shut down to a minimum level as expected. This is often due to the Building Management System behaving unexpectedly, with potentially erroneous demands causing plant to continue to operate despite changes to calendar settings, thereby actually increasing costs.

Insurance Risk

Through major plant and associated equipment being turned off and therefore idle, without regular flushing or running of systems, this could cause damage to assets through seizure which will most likely require replacement if this is the case. Furthermore, there could be increased corrosion through poor water quality can lead to water leaks and damage to building contents and fabric.

Business Critical Systems

Some buildings house business critical systems such as computer equipment and server rooms that will likely need to remain operational throughout to maintain data integrity and to ensure a quick reinstatement of the property. Through the Demand Logic platform, you can ensure that these business-critical systems are receiving the optimal environment through effective control, without having a controls override which has turned off everything.

Real life examples on what to look out for.

Now that we’ve outlined the issues, here is the evidence to boot with our real life examples straight from our platform. And, yes, we solved them too.

Instructed to be fully shutdown.

• BMS data is suggesting there are still some pumps and fans running 24/7 (whilst others are not running at all) and immersion heaters still running regularly.
• Where boilers have been shut down, temperature sensors are suggesting readings sustained in the LTHW system, for almost two weeks so far, which appear to present a possible legionella risk.
• AHU fans and valves seem to have been deactivated completely.
• There appears to have been no chiller or associated pump activity at all over the last fortnight which is good for energy saving but could present issues.

Property instructed to be shut down to skeleton staff

• Large amount of energy wastage identified through controls strategy not taking affect across all areas.
  • All FCUs appear to still be running as usual on the ground floor, 1st floor and 4th floor (on the other floors FCUs seem to have been largely deactivated).
  • Office chiller and general boiler activity also seems to be carrying on as usual along with some DHWS pumps and Cat A AHUs (pumps/valves/fans).
  • In cases where pumps or valves remain continuously deactivated for too long, it is possible that they will seize up and not run when reactivated (regular pump/valve exercise strategies recommended).
  • It looks as though office chillers and associated pumps have actually started to be activated more often and for longer over the last five days or so.
  • LTHW/DHW systems and associated pumps seem to be running as usual.
  • AHU fans and valves also appear to be running as usual.
  • Night time activation of all the car park and perimeter lighting seems to be continuing as usual. 
  • The kitchen extract fan appears to still be running continuously 24/7 (and other associated fans on and off as usual).

Property which has been used for key staff (less than 10% of usual occupancy)

• Boiler, chiller and AHU fans look as though they are running as usual.
• Seems as though assets are running as they were before the changes with the exception of:
  • It seems there's been a reduction in "Main and Extension" AHU valve activity (as well as for "Gym" and "Pensions").
  • Also it appears as though there's been a reduction in VT circuit valve and pump activity (as well as "Main B", "Ext LTHW" and "Deeds" pumps.

Other commonly seen examples

• Controls Strategy amended to reflect no occupancy in the property.
  • Would recommend to allow for regular flushing of system and running of major rotary plant to avoid seizure and stagnation issues.
• All major plant has been amended to reflect the reduction in occupancy and control strategies changed
  • Identified that a large number of major plant has been turned ‘in-hand’ so therefore running continuously rather than in line with amended controls strategies.

Our next blog will provide insight and information on how you can use data to tackle these.

We fully understand and accept that there is an unknown element to the current COVID crisis and its potential duration and implications for our partners’ businesses, as a small business we feel this as keenly as anyone. However, we also believe that remote monitoring of buildings is more valuable now than ever.  Many of our clients are relying on us to play a key role in their shutdown programs where we work closely with them to do a periodic review of their buildings, ensuring that considerations, such as those above, are closely monitored.