ABB Cityport Building

The HQ of industrial giant ABB in Zurich, Switzerland again shows how use of the NIAGARA Framework can lead to quick and successful results on complex and significant projects.

The NIAGARA Framework has quickly and successfully connected a complex range of building services equipment on ndependent BACNET, EIB and LONWORKS control bus networks into one integrated, web-based control environment. This has enabled ABB to develop Cityport as a showcase “smart” development for its own Performance Buildings concept, delivering major building control interoperability advantages; fast and easy remote, web-enabled accessibility with the capability for simple system extension in the future.

Constructed to consolidate seven different ABB office locations into one, Cityport thanks
to Tridium’s NIAGARA Framework and ABB’s own Industrial software, has the all functional areas of the building connected to each other through a web-based architecture on a standardised IT platform. This highly integrated Performance Building redefines the scope of commercial building control beyond heating,
ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, telephones and elevators to include processes and applications for all support functions from catering to visitor management.

ABB recognised that building services sub-system integration alone presented a key challenge to this open vision. The BACNET protocol is used to communicate with the control station of the basic part of the building while lighting, blinds, curtains and window control for each room are controlled through a network using the EIB bus. Meanwhile, the building’s heating and cooling is achieved by VAV terminal units regulated via a LONWORKS control network. However, by converting all these control devices into software “objects” and using Tridium developed drivers, the NIAGARA FrameworkTM talks to each controller using its native protocol and respective network creating a common, distributed and genuinely open environment, irrespective of controller type and manufacturer, and without the need for special gateways.

The Tridium NIAGARA Framework also allows control system access via any standard web browser. Graphical information is served up as HTML pages to ensure that all supervisory actions; such as monitoring, adjustment, data archiving and equipment maintenance on these different sub-systems, can take place from any PC on the ABB intranet, so avoiding the need for expensive BMS supervisory software. More than this, the distributed webbased architecture of the Tridium controlled and networked subsystems,
contributes to Cityport’s communications power, by allowing integration with other web-based applications and subsystems in the building. At Cityport these other web servicesinclude personal electronic agenda, room reservation system, visitor announcement, access control, telephony, catering order fulfilment, audio visual equipment control and ERP invoicing.

 An ABB employee can use Lotus Notes to book one of Cityport’s conference rooms, invite participants, send them agendas, booout of town visitor’s accommodation, arrange their access to the building and specify occupancy comfort conditions for this room, all within minutes, instead of the processes taking hours or days.In a Performance Building, like Cityport, the various sub-systems all co-operate seamlessly to take care of these and other tasks. This level of integration can also save energy in many ways with,
for example, window blinds being automatically adjusted to regulate heating or cooling in a room rather than through mechanical plant activation. The NIAGARA FrameworkTM is embedded within eight Tridium JACE control units installed throughout the building, with one unit allocated to serve control devices on each floor. The control system was engineered via a web-browser, supporting multiple access and parallel binding locations, and can be adapted or extended to accommodate new controllers quickly and easily in the same way in the future.

"The NIAGARA architecture fits perfectly with the web-based services which are the communications backbone of ABB’s own Performance Building approach"

“Full equipment integration and web-enabled access to controllers using BACNET, EIB and LONWORKS protocols, without the need for special gateways.”

The project

The requirement

Tridium provides

The results

Conclusion