In this interview, Luke Hall, Commissioning Manager at Dome Consulting, discusses his role in supporting Landsec’s N2 building and the impact of digital tools like Demand Logic on commissioning and energy management. With extensive experience leading projects across the UK and Europe, Luke highlights how data-driven insights are transforming building performance reviews, optimising energy efficiency, and enhancing operational processes. He shares key findings from his work at N2, explains the benefits of continuous commissioning, and offers his perspective on the future of smart building technologies in the real estate sector.
Can you tell us a bit about you, your role at Dome Consulting and how you help support Landsec in relation to the n2 building?
I’m a Commissioning Manager at Dome; I lead various projects across the UK and Europe.
My role varies based on the client needs but generally includes programme management, commission-ability design reviews, the development/oversight of the project commissioning procedures throughout the project duration and ensuring the systems operate and comply with the employer’s requirements, designers’ specification and any local codes.
Dome was engaged as the commissioning manager for the N2 project by Landsec, in addition Landsec engaged Dome to perform a post-occupancy review, assessing building performance and efficiency against baseline commissioned parameters and identifying potential energy-saving opportunities.
As a user of the Demand Logic Platform, what are your main objectives for using it?
My main objective was to use the platform to assess equipment performance against baseline parameters and analyse historical data for optimisation opportunities.
Tools like the ‘Rogue Finder’ allow you to focus easily on what’s important, it helped me to identify systems operating outside expected performance criteria. I could then raise issues directly within the trend view and communicate findings to onsite engineers, ensuring the right people action them.
How has your use of the Demand Logic Platform influenced day-to-day operations and/or energy management? Are you able to quantify any tangible improvements?
I really enjoyed using the Demand Logic platform as it provided me with a comprehensive yet clear rich-data presentation via its intuitive dashboards/overviews. The system's quick refresh rates and loading times help to eliminate typical delays in trend analysis which is critical when undertaking such a review flip flopping between various trend system trend graphs.
A couple of the key tangible energy-saving opportunities identified included:
- AHU pre-heat coils – Optimising operational setpoints and control’s philosophy to reduce energy waste.
- Temperature controls – Adjusting control deadbands for the primary air system for efficiency.
- Water systems – Revising sequencing to prevent unnecessary circulation of heat/cooling energy between various parts of the hydraulic circuits.
- Occupancy schedules – Aligning some of the floors to align heating/cooling demands to cut down the 20-hour daily runtime of the heating and cooling plant.
Demand Logic facilitates ‘condition-based maintenance’ and ‘continuous commissioning’. How has this impacted your approach to ‘post-occupancy performance reviews’ / ‘seasonal commissioning’?
I found the platform simple and intuitive to use. Making light work of the post occupancy review.
The dashboards are scalable whilst still clear, set up in such a way that you can display the operation of 500+ terminal units or multiple AHU units on one page, enabling me to quickly identify any rouge units whilst avoiding overwhelm and clutter, if I ever needed to access additional points for reference, it was just a couple of clicks away.
Therefore, where you might typically review a sample of the systems, it allows you to cast your net wide and far, securing the building's performance and operation at handover.
What advice would you give to other Commissioning professionals looking to adopt new technologies like Demand Logic?
The commissioning of buildings is changing, and the commissioning industry is witnessing an ever-increasing convergence of MEP & IT.
I believe in the near future all MEP devices installed in buildings will be IP enabled and on a ‘building operating system’ type enterprise network as standard.
These systems are tools that should be used and if used correctly only improve the delivery journey.
Demand logic plugs into existing infrastructure and new building infrastructure in the same way, pulling the wide data volume into usable intuitive displays and dashboards.
Whilst the system does in one-way lays bare the operation of systems and therefore system operation scrutiny, I believe overall it to be beneficial as it holds us as professionals accountable.
These types of systems enhance commissioning by enabling rigorous fine-tuning and comprehensive system wide analysis, moving beyond the traditional sample % of each system. The output is a superior, more energy efficient building delivery to the end client, saving energy and improving the environment for the occupants in the building.
Once set up and in the building, these types of tools are invaluable for continuous commissioning activities and implementing condition-based maintenance focusing engineering time on actual issues.
From your perspective, how could implementing Demand Logic across multiple sites in a real-estate portfolio improve continuous-commissioning, operational efficiency & sustainability of the built environment.
In my opinion, using Demand Logic across a real-estate portfolio would simplify and improve building maintenance and performance.
The platform provides maintenance teams with clear dashboards and insights into equipment performance, allowing the teams to focus on what needs urgent attention followed by improvement activities.
Furthermore, the dashboards can be compared across different campuses, offering deeper insights into system efficiency.
As an example, terminal units in one building could be compared to identical units in other locations, making it easier to spot inconsistencies or inefficiencies. Additionally, the performance of equipment from different manufacturers could be analysed, with data fed back to design teams to inform future projects.
The data collected across the portfolio could also be shared with manufacturers, giving them real world insights into how their equipment performs in different settings.
I look forward to this type of collaborative approach between building owners and manufacturers and designers, as it should lead to better designed, more efficient systems in the future, benefiting both our clients and the broader industry.
