The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh

The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh

The Queen's Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh was opened by Her Majesty on 29 November 2002 as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations. Built in the shell of the former Holyrood Free Church and Duchess of Gordon's School, the Gallery provides purpose-built, state-of-the-art facilities to enable exhibitions of the most delicate works of art from the Royal Collection to be shown in Scotland for the first time.

The bold transformation of the two buildings was designed by Edinburgh-based Benjamin Tindall Architects and funded entirely by the Royal Collection Trust. Combined Energy Solutions (CES) designed, installed and commissioned the automated building controls, based on a Trend Building Management System (BMS).

Control and Management Operations

The electrical and mechanical services were designed for both resilience and energy efficiency, with the main role of the BMS being to manage both Normal and Emergency modes of operation, ensuring that the Gallery's air quality, humidity and temperature is maintained within close tolerances continuously, as efficiently as possible. Conditioned air is continuously re-circulated, except for CO2 regulated demands for outside air, ensuring ventilation loses are only realised when the gallery is open to the public.

Equally important is the extensive condition monitoring and alarm management role of the BMS. The BMS provides an accurate, easily accessible record of all sensed and derived values. Multipoint traces of the Gallery's air quality, temperature and humidity are displayed concurrently with associated set points and plant control values, to provide both historic and real time system performance data. The BMS provides an alarm-handling database with incoming and historic alarms held for a pre-set length of time. Alarms are generated whenever plant faults occur, or the Gallery environmental conditions breach pre-set limits. All alarms are classified according to severity, and critical alarms communicated immediately to the continuously manned security office so immediate remedial action can be initiated.

These monitoring and control functions are provided by a centralised control panel with Trend IQ Intelligent Controllers. A Trend Network Display Panel provides local access to the BMS system within the plant room, and a Trend 962 Supervisor provides site access and the main graphical user interface. Remote access is provided via a Trend TMNH modem using a PSTN dial up connection. This allows the CES Bureau access for remote diagnostics so that only the appropriate maintenance contractor is directed to site whenever a fault occurs.

The CES Bureau operates on a 24-hour basis and provides a single point of contact for remote diagnostics and emergency escalation. CES provides a 1-hour initial diagnostics response, then a 1-hour callout response to site, as do all of the other maintenance contractors. CES also provides annual maintenance of the automated building control system.


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