FEATURE Condition-based monitoring
The City of London’s skyline has been transformed over the last 20 years with the addition of a number of buildings with quirky nicknames. One such example is 52 Lime Street, otherwise known as the Scalpel. Michelle Lea got to go behind the scenes to see how condition-based monitoring, using components from Turck Banner, keeps the building’s facilities operating smoothly
BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE SCALPEL BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE SCALPEL
chillers, boilers and other critical assets that are being monitored and managed to ensure and cold water.
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At the Scalpel building, this responsibility falls to a collaboration between three companies: global real estate services company CBRE, repair and maintenance services provider Fletcher Moorland, and industrial automation solutions specialist Turck Banner. Daniel Mayes, is engineering manager at CBRE. He explained how the company is using Meerkat from Fletcher Moorland, a wireless condition-monitoring system, to monitor essential components of the building management system. The premise is simple: CBRE is in control of the assets 24-7, 365 days a year, so needs to monitor asset performance and lifecycle. John Dennis, from CBRE, said: “We don’t want to wait to for a PPM (Planned Preventative Maintenance) visit, maybe in three-months’ time or six-months’ time, where high cost because we haven’t seen it before it started failing. With the Meerkat system, you can see the warnings. going wrong very early. You can then plan, of repairing the pump before it gets to the failure point, whether that be early, before the manufacturer’s guidance or manufacturer’s recommendations, or within 10 years’ time.” The Meerkat system was installed when CBRE took on the building contractually. Matt Fletcher, managing director at Fletcher condition monitoring doesn’t stop failures. It gives you data to make good decisions to then stop failures.”
automationmagazine.co.uk
hen we are in the public areas of some of London’s iconic buildings, we tend not to think about all the pumps,
Initially, key to the choice of the Meerkat
was the value of service and experience Fletcher solution stood out because it had everything we needed at that point of hand already. You had that key communication link where you could see everything from the touch of a button.” The system itself is based on wireless sensor nodes which transmit data back to the Meerkat box. The nodes are supplied by Turck Banner and installed on the assets.
Mayes explained how the building’s system 36 and 37, and we have our primary circuit that our secondary circuit is pumped down through our heat exchangers. Our secondary system goes have AHUs (Air Handling Units) on every single
An example of the Meerkat system in action concerns the failure of bearings on a pump. Mayes said: “We are starting to have a failure, which got picked up very early on by the Meerkat system. We’ve already ordered the material, and it’s due to be replaced. Meerkat picked up the issue way before we could hear it. In the last two weeks, it’s now started to make an audible noise, which bearings on our number 3 pump.” The Meerkat system is taking readings from
the wireless nodes at a set time and then sending that data through a GSM network to the cloud. This data is collated on a dashboard. If something breaches a set threshold, such as an increase in vibration, this is a sign that something is wrong. And what if Meerkat wasn’t there, doing its said: “The entire low-rise tenants, so from level 1 to level 15, would not have cooling. So during the summer, that’s not good. That’s a lot of help desk tickets and a lot of angry tenants and landlords!” Faulty pumps also have to work harder, so draw more energy. Repairing a pump earlier contributes to the building’s sustainability goals. Matt Fletcher said: “By refurbishing a pump, the
energy input is a lot less than bringing a virgin pump online. Even recycling is worse than repairing and reusing.” Critical spares are now kept on site to carry out repairs and reduce delays.
CBRE can view the asset data back in the
control room on the Meerkat dashboard. Mayes said: “When you click on the tabs, all the nodes and all the sensors are broken down by pump reference. We can then click on the pump, and we can see vibration, peak acceleration, and temperature data, and the add-ons that we’ve recently done [a greasing schedule that has been embedded in Meerkat].” Rich Urwin, from Fletcher Moorland, said: “Each individual area in the plant system, so if anything was to go wrong in each area, it would turn red.”
The system also allows for the collation
of trend data. Mayes said: “We have an iPad walkaround once a day, and part of the checklist is to say that I’ve been to the Meerkat and reviewed it, and there are no faults. On top of that, if a fault is found, it will then generate an email to me, the client, and all the engineers.”
Dennis said: ‘The engineering team has full visibility via a virtual viewing app, which the engineers can see 24 hours a day. Within that, we can see our main plant in boilers, cooling towers, chillers, and our Meerkat system.” Tony Coghlan, managing director at
Turck Banner, said: “Both Turck Banner and You can get the data in many, many formats, and that’s a big positive for a lot of end users.” Fletcher agreed: “We push the fact that its the customers’ data.” “And they can tell us how they want it,” concluded Coghlan.
Turck Banner
www.turckbanner.co.uk/en/
Automation | February 2025 33
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