When Clifford Chance, the leading international law firm, moved its HQ from the City to 10 Upper Bank Street, Canary Wharf, Simmtronic won the contract to supply lighting control systems for the new building:
On one of Europe's biggest fit-out projects in recent years, Simmtronic worked closely with M & E consultant Hilson Moran and the two electrical installation contractors, T. Clarke Plc (22 floors) and Phoenix (8 floors), to provide a highly effective and fully addressable lighting control system, using its well proven SPECS3 technology.
Commanding a central position along Heron Quay, the 1.1 million sq.ft. building comprises a 30 storey office tower and six storey podium, linked by an impressive glass enclosed Atrium. The complex, which is the new workplace for over 5000 personnel, includes hundreds of two-occupant lawyer's offices, and a conference centre, as well as meeting rooms, training facilities, and an auditorium. Among the amenities are restaurants, cafes, retail shops, a fitness centre and swimming pool and access to the Jubilee Line Underground. All these facilities combined to make this a highly complex lighting controls project. It posed a logistical challenge, with vast quantities of equipment being shipped to the two contractors as they were simultaneously installing on different floors.
The lighting scheme and controls:
The majority of the thirty Tower floors each have over 50 lawyers offices positioned around a very large central open-plan general administration and legal secretarial area. All cellular offices feature universal heads controlling eight lights with infra-red and photo cell control (dimming), progressively reducing or turning off lighting rows in response to daylight penetration. The controls have been designed to facilitate the future use of telephone switching for local overrride to enable each occupant to adjust their personal lighting environment. By simply dialling a four-digit code, they will be able to make changes in increments of 10%. Whenever any one of the cellular offices is occupied or there is anyone in the main office, the corridor lights are held on. The open plan secretarial neighbourhoods are presence based with a local control facility if required. Lifts and lobbies are lit 24 hours.
There are a number of specialist floors containing seminar rooms, meeting rooms, conference suites and training facilities. Here the lighting controls have extensive scene setting dimming functions and are interfaced with audio visual systems. Sliding partition interfacing also features in many of these rooms so when two separate rooms are opened up into one, the lighting controls have been designed to automatically link together.
Simmtronic also provided all the lighting controls for the amenity areas with a range of solutions tailored to the precise requirements of each particular environment.
Commissioning files early:
In all, the project had over 60,000 commissioning points, with more than 50,000 light fittings, 4300 LCMs, 2,500 presence detectors, 4500 emergency sensors, plus scene setters, AV and other specialist interfaces. Because of its complexity, Simmtronic had to start preparing commissioning files some six months before even stepping on site.
To ensure that the lighting control system will continue to function as effectively in the future as it did on day one, Simmtronic are providing the client's in-house maintenance and facilities management teams with extensive training to enable them to make and programme changes in response to any alteration to the floor plan or revised lighting requirements.
Contact: Mario Costanzo
Simmtronic
Unit 3 Waterside, Charlton Mead Lane,
Hoddesdon, Herts EN11 0QR
Tel: 01992 450126
Fax: 01992 450127
Email: [email protected]