Clean and controlled

06 June 2012

Building Services Managers from FM companies and industry attended the Low Energy Cleanrooms and Controlled Environments Conference, held a few weeks ago. Here PFM gives an overview of the day and how the controlled environment will shape the FM market of tomorrow.

Over 40 delegates attended the conference at the IOD in London, which was hosted by Cavendish Engineers.

Steve Allen from Cavendish Engineers kicked off the conference by highlighting the importance of measuring energy in a building. "If you don't measure it you can't manage it." He highlighted that any building now has the challenge of providing a controlled environment whatever the age. Steve Allen went on to use the example of 9 Millbank, a grade listed building where they have successfully reduced the energy by 48%.

Stuart Kay from Airedale, manufacturer of chillers and precision air conditioning, provided an overview of the £96m chillers market in the UK, and various low energy chiller technologies. He also touched on free cooling and how this is applied in controlled environments such as data centres.

Kevin Ricketts from Schneider Electric then detailed the right cooling technology for the right environment, whether this is a data centre, heritage building or cleanroom. Power to drive the equipment is vital.

After lunch Colin Richardson, Managing Director of on365 presented on Overcoming the Challenge of Virtual Blindness. He touched on the importance of 'bridging the gap between facility and IT' when it comes to Virtualisation Management of data centres.

Gareth French from Humideco explained what humidity is and why humidify in controlled environments. He made a complicated subject interesting through case studies on where low energy humidification technologies have reduced operational cost.

Brian Glynn from LSii Europe gave a passionate presentation on LED lighting with demonstrations on applications and giving warning that not all LED's are the same.

Steve Allen rounded up the conference with a series of questions to the speakers of the day.