SCS blends three contracts into one
A £250 000 building-management system for the new £10 million Fulton Building at the University of Sussex has been completed by SCS Group. This integrated system controls ventilation, air conditioning, underfloor heating and hot-water systems at the Brighton Campus and was designed and installed by SCS.
Contractor Essex Services Group originally specified three separate systems for the project. They were a building-management system window actuators and passive ventilation — with the elements interfaced through the BMS. SCS Group was awarded the contract after designing a completely integrated building-services package that simplified the installation and reduced costs by 35%.
The Fulton Building will provide 3000 m2 of teaching space across three floors, including two 160-seat lecture theatres and 22 seminar rooms of various sizes.
Features of the building include concrete floors acting as heat sinks, a natural-ventilation system comprising 24 roof-mounted extract terminals with cross-talk attenuators to prevent noise transmission between classrooms and boost fans for extreme Summer conditions.
Automatic dampers control ventilation rates in the lecture rooms, and a hundred automatic actuators on high-level windows provide fresh air and ventilation to common areas, including an atrium.
SCS commercial director Chris Jones, says, ‘We were really pleased with the innovative solution that we devised for this project. We not only reduced costs significantly against the original specification, but were able to cut installation time down to three weeks as the system was entirely integrated. Having one contractor managing the entire project rather than three separate ones also improved efficiency on site.’
