SMART BUILDING TECHNOLOGY
Smart lighting and sensors for bereavement facility
George Pritchard, Technical director at Scenariio, a Derby-based smart buildings and IT specialist, discusses the company’s work to install LED lights, environmental sensors, and an emergency lighting system, at The Saplings, a new children’s bereavement counselling centre at Treetops Hospice in Risley, Derbyshire. The ‘human-centric’ lights adjust their colour temperature throughout the day, replicating the changing white tones of daylight – from a blue-white in the mid-morning/early afternoon, to warmer yellow-white in the late afternoon/evening, complementing both the young occupants’ own inbuilt circadian rhythms, and their activities within the centre, by changing the colour temperature to match whatever they are doing.
It was very clear from the moment we turned up at Treetops Hospice just eight miles away from our office in Derbyshire that this wasn’t going to be an ordinary job. It was the first day of BBC Children in Need’s DIY: SOS’s Big Build, and we’d been invited to install the lighting throughout the programme’s latest project – a Children’s Bereavement Therapy and Counselling Centre. The hospice, which was established 40
years ago, was looking for somewhere that young people who had just lost a close relative could go in order to work through their grief. In response, the scheme’s architects drew up plans for a 170 m2
single-storey building featuring
three counselling rooms, a therapy room, and a multi-functional space where families can meet and socialise. It would be a safe space, relaxing and comfortable, and designed to be fully accessible and neurodiversity-friendly. Treetops also wanted it to include technology that would enable it to operate with low running costs.
Dozens of trade companies involved With the plans agreed, it was over to BBC Children in Need, which arranged for dozens of trade companies, from bricklayers to plasterers, carpenters, and landscape gardeners, to donate time, products, and skills to make the scheme a reality. For our part, we spent four days on site fitting LED lights, environmental sensors, and an emergency lighting system, linking them not to the usual 240V electrical cabling, but to a network of ethernet cables. These carry both the electricity needed
to power the lights, and the sensors and data to the building ‘comms room’ in order to integrate the information received into a dashboard and the building management system. At the heart of the installation are the sensors – there are 32 in all, all working together to deliver information about
building occupancy, light levels, air quality, and temperature, so that the data can be viewed on one platform. This technology is at the heart of the smart buildings movement, which two years ago was recognised when the NHS launched its six- year National Framework Agreement for the provision of Smart Building Solutions.
Benefits of digital technologies The agreement recognised how new digital capabilities across hospitals will deliver benefits for users and staff alike, as well as reducing energy use and emissions, just as we have done at Treetops, courtesy of collaborating on a project that was receiving national attention and taking shape in the company of celebrities including Nick Knowles, Zoe Ball, and Scott Mills.
A significant aspect of the smart building technology at Treetops is the
lights which – instead of standard LED lights – are human-centric, meaning they are programmed to adjust their colour temperature throughout the day. This replicates the changing white tones of daylight, from a blue-white in the mid-morning/early afternoon (around 6,500 Kelvin) to warmer yellow-white (2,700 Kelvin) in the late afternoon/evening, complementing the young people’s own inbuilt circadian rhythms, which are at the heart of a healthy life. The benefits of circadian lighting in healthcare settings are now widely understood. Although we like to think our technological world has allowed us to break away from nature, humans continue to come awake when it gets light outside, and get sleepy when darkness falls. This is because the light levels affect the activity of structures in our brains that constitute
A treatment room fitted with human-centric lighting. August 2024 Health Estate Journal 51
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