The high commission

There have been some big changes in Leeds over the past decade. A city that once sat at the heart of the industrial north is now one of the UK’s biggest financial centres, a Mecca for shoppers and a cosmopolitan, 24-hour city in which to live and work.

With the rise in the city’s fortunes and reputation, its landscape has undergone a transformation: imposing new builds now sit side by side with Leeds’ grandiose 19th century heritage. Both big corporates looking for relocation or expansion opportunities, and individuals searching for a vibrant place to live, are moving into the city in their droves – and they expect the highest standards of 21st century building design and fit out.

While an impressive array of commercial and residential schemes have been completed over a dazzlingly short time period, one building has raised the bar above all others in the city.

At 32 storeys high, Bridgewater Place has already become the landmark that defines one of the gateways into Leeds city centre, standing as it does 12 storeys taller than any of its current rivals. One of the biggest towers outside London, it exemplifies 21st century Leeds, combining nine floors of high-spec, grade A office space with chic apartments, a hotel, restaurant and shops.

Designed by architect Aedas, the building incorporates an eight-storey glass atrium that links two tower structures and allows natural light to flood into the building. With its striking design, 400 underground car parking spaces and central location, it’s no wonder that floors five to eight were prelet to law firm Eversheds long before the building was completed.

The task of ensuring that the building’s electrical services matched its design pedigree was given to m&e contractor SES (Shepherd Engineering Services). “Bridgewater Place is the epitome of a contemporary intelligent building, and the electrical systems play a significant role in delivering a commercial environment which both responds to and anticipates its clients’ needs,” says Ashley Rawson, senior project engineer at SES.

SES was responsible for all temperature control, power distribution and lighting throughout the commercial floors of the building and also installed sophisticated fire alarm and security systems. The company’s brief was to manage costs, operate within a tight schedule and enhance the overall energy efficiency profile of the building.

“For example, the design of the building works hard to maximise natural light, reducing the dependence on electric lights, thereby reducing the building’s environmental impact,” says Rawson. “By building in KNX-compatible lighting controls, the electrical installation supports these environmental principles, saving energy by ensuring that lights are switched off when the building is not in use and making it easy for individual occupiers to set the controls to meet their own individual needs.”

Similarly, temperature control was an important element of the m&e installation with 603 fan coil units installed and connected to the building management system. “This will ensure that the building provides an ideal working environment throughout the year, while offering the flexibility for individual occupiers to choose their own optimum temperature and reducing energy wastage,” adds Rawson.

With 23 000 m2 of commercial office space to fit out, SES began the job by creating a basic design for each floorplate. With floors five to eight prelet to Eversheds, the company was able to produce a detailed plan for these storeys as the location of meeting rooms, offices and even individual desks had already been determined. For the other floors, now let to other big names including BDO Stoy Hayward, Ernst & Young and Standard Life, SES’s approach of using pre-wired service modules built off site offered the flexibility needed to tailor electrical services requirements as and when occupiers took up space.

“Our installation plans were based around an open-plan office structure, but we had to factor in the fact that this could change if a tenant with a requirement for individual offices came on the scene,” Rawson continues. “As a result, we looked for products that would offer us maximum flexibility so that any changes would just be a quick and simple retrofit and re-commissioning.”

The service modules contained all the chilled and low temperature water services as well as busbar containment for the electrical services. Having decided to take a modular approach, SES scoured the market for a lighting system that could easily be incorporated into the pipe modules and would be equally quick and easy to install. After considering both pre-wired modular systems and intelligent busbar systems, the company opted for Electrak’s buscom trunking and Lightrak KNX lighting control system on all commercial floors.

Buscom is a busbar hybrid and was developed to meet the increasing need for pre-fabrication and flexibility with overhead power and control distribution systems. As with busbar, it provides power distribution for lighting, fan coil units and any other small power needs, but also provides signal bus distribution by means of its integral twisted pair communications control circuit. This solution combines with the Lightrak lighting control. The system uses the KNX protocol, which is recognised across Europe and allows seamless integration with any other KNX building control product. Not only did these products offer SES a simple-to-install solution, but they also mean occupiers can adapt services to meet their own needs.

Electrak provided a complete design for the Lightrak installation for each floor, including full working drawings, and speed of installation was one of the system’s key advantages for SES.

Jon Swales, contracts manager at SES, continues: “We are always looking for ways of driving down costs by reducing installation times, whilst maintaining quality standards. Time spent on site is one of our biggest costs and with Electrak’s combined lighting control system we were able to significantly reduce installation times, needing fewer skilled engineers on site for a shorter period of time.”

With the project having such a high profile, completing the m&e installation not only helped to manage costs, but was also critical to keeping the build on schedule. SES went into an empty floorplate on each storey and completed all first fix installation in the ceiling

voids within 3-4 weeks on each floor. The work was scheduled as part of a rolling programme, with other contractors booked in to carry out works on each floor in between SES’s first and second fix jobs, so even a slight time slippage could have precipitated a significant delay in the building’s progress.

“We had to guarantee that we would complete each stage of works for each floor within a prescribed time frame,” says Swales. “A modular approach with power/bus distribution and lighting control systems was the most effective way of achieving this.”

Electrak’s system does not require any labour-intensive hard wiring. The buscom trunking is simply installed, linked up to the power supply and connected to the signal bus. All connections are then tool free, with lighting control units clipping onto the buscom trunking and luminaires, and presence detectors and switches connecting to the system with modular plug in leads.

The bms at Bridgewater Place will control when the building comes to life each morning and when it shuts down each evening, with heating being switched on before workers arrive each morning and lights switched off automatically at home time.

“The kind of companies occupying this building are professional firms and so this will not be a nine-to-five environment,” continues Swales. “That’s why aspects of the electrical installation like the KNX lighting control systems are so important. They are fully programmable to ensure that energy is not unnecessarily wasted, but they do not tie occupiers to a hard-and-fast schedule. Daylight sensors mean that lights will automatically switch off on brighter days, saving even more energy, and PIR motion detectors will switch the lights on where needed if the building is occupied out of hours.”

The building’s built-in flexibility in terms of m&e services was a key selling point for tenants and, as an early prelet, Eversheds was able to specify the company’s exact needs. As a result, not only was SES able to install all data cabling, desk sockets and even cleaner sockets on floors five to eight, but the contractor was also able to ensure that Eversheds’ staff can control the temperature of meeting rooms to within +/-2 degrees in each room.

“For us the installation was not about ticking the boxes for any particular tenant, you’d expect second fix for a known occupier to offer a detailed scheme,” says Swales. “Actually it’s about being able to modify the installation easily, so that we’re not just futureproofing it for new tenants coming, but ensuring it’s adaptable for all tenants as their needs change. While we may have to add a module here and there and some re-commissioning may be required from time to time, the system we have installed at Bridgewater Place ensures that it’s easy to make changes without any major upheaval.

“A user-friendly approach to complex service provision is the essence of intelligent buildings and at Bridgewater Place, these principles are consistent across installation, bms integration and end user programming.”