An imposing 200 year old landmark building in the Isle of Man’s capital, Douglas, the Old Courthouse lay vacant and unused for a decade until its new owners, Castano Limited, commissioned developer, Dandara to redevelop it.  Work began on the project in May 2007 and, two years later, the building is now a stunning development that blends the best of the Isle of Man’s rich architectural heritage with its contemporary status as a centre of commerce and tourism.

A striking Georgian building, the Old Courthouse retains its original columned facade, which now provides the gateway to an ultra-modern, high specification development to the rear of the scheme.  The 28,000 sq ft building now comprises three storeys of high calibre office space, a restaurant and a night club over two floors.  The offices share a roof terrace and there is ample parking below ground level.  The scheme has been welcomed by the Manx government, which is keen to see high quality commercial and leisure developments on the island. But the cachet of this scheme is not simply in its address or design; it’s in the creative provision of building services that are both flexible enough to meet the bespoke requirements of any tenant and futureproofed enough to evolve with those needs.

A Flexible Vision
Having had experience of KNX installations on previous residential schemes and also being aware of its many successes in commercial developments, Castano specified that the Old Courthouse’s electrical services should be based on the KNX protocol, the world’s first open standard for building controls.  In a KNX building, all the building controls are interoperable offering the integrator, landlord or the end user the ability to cherry pick different building control elements and integrate them quickly and simply.  The main mechanical and electrical specification including lighting and HVAC design was provided by March Consultants, while Building Evolution, the intelligent control specialist, was asked, firstly to provide suggestions on what may be achieved, followed by a specification for integrating the various building services together over KNX.

“The Isle of Man attracts a lot of blue chip companies and the trend on the island is towards very high specification office accommodation as tenants are often world class companies with high expectations,” explains Nigel Stafford from Building Evolution. “The brief was really to create something at the Old Courthouse that would make the development stand out from its competitors in the Isle of Man commercial rental market and set a benchmark for other schemes to aspire to. We therefore had to ensure that the design and functionality of the KNX installation not only offered practical advantages for the landlord but that it also provided the comfort, flexibility and ‘wow’ factor that would attract big name tenants.”

With no existing specification for an intelligent control system to work from, Nigel set about designing the KNX system that he believed would suit the building’s requirements and put forward a proposal for the scheme.  His brief was to create a KNX installation for the office, roof terrace, landlord areas and underground parking only, as the leisure aspects of the scheme were to be specified separately.  As none of the office accommodation had been pre-let prior to the design of the KNX system, the design was based on a completely open plan layout for each of the three floors of offices, with a view to re-programming individual elements to meet the needs of tenants as they took up space.

“One of the big advantages of using KNX is that it is so flexible,” explains Nigel. “With more than 100 companies making KNX-certified products, a tenant can pretty much select whatever functionality he wants and it can be added to the system on a plug and play basis and integrated quickly and simply anywhere on the system.  So what we did with the original design was to build in as much flexibility as possible for the future tenants whilst providing the landlord with centralised controls and monitoring so that they know exactly what’s happening in the building at any time simply by using a touch screen.”

Building in Common Sense
As a basic building block of a flexible and adaptable KNX system, Building Evolution specified Wieland Gesis cabling throughout the building. This flat, three-phase cable with integrated bus allowed the contractor to designate separate live outputs for lighting, air conditioning and general power whilst keeping the bus cabling on the same network.  The electrical contractor installed several runs of cable throughout the ceiling voids on each floor, effectively providing tramlines of power and comms so that the space could be configured in any way and the power and building controls could be adapted quickly along with it.

“By wiring the building in this way we could make sure that the landlord could adapt it to meet the needs of future tenants as any type of controller can be integrated anywhere along the system,” explains Nigel. “For example, the lighting control units, which also included a facility to plug in presences detectors if required, were all connected to the Gesis wiring, which means that these can be moved easily if that’s required at some point in the future.”

Movement and presence detectors were used throughout the commercial development and in the main entrance and the car park areas the movement detectors are combined with timers to ensure that lighting is always switched on during office hours. On all the stairways and landings the lighting is controlled by movement detectors alone and these are programmed to keep the lights switched on for a period of fifteen minutes after motion has been detected to ensure that lighting is always available when required  but never left on unnecessarily.  On the staircases, the system has been programmed so that when movement is detected on a landing, as well as the lights on that landing coming on, the light at the top of the stairs on the landing above and the light on the bottom of the stairs on the landing below comes on, ensuring that the lighting always anticipates the needs of tenants.

“One of the things that attracted us about using KNX is that you can build in common sense,” comments David Hathersich-Jones from Castano. “We used a specialist in intelligent buildings to design the system and part of his role throughout the design process was to ask what the tenants’ practical needs would be and to build those needs into the system.  That’s why our tenants now find the building so user friendly.”

Easy Integration
While the use of a programmable lighting control system is commonplace in any modern commercial building, integrating the lighting controls with the building’s heating and cooling system is much more complex – but within a KNX system HVAC and lighting can be integrated quite simply.

Both cooling and heating for the office areas at the Old Courthouse are provided by a Daikin air conditioning system and Building Evolution integrated the HVAC system with the lighting control system so that, where tenants requested it, the air conditioning kicks in automatically whenever an office or meeting room is occupied.  Because the whole system is integrated with the lighting controls, which can be moved or reprogrammed quickly and easily if the building is reconfigured or a tenant’s requirements change, the whole system offers complete flexibility for both landlord and occupier.

What’s more, each tenanted area has been fitted with a Jung KNX colour touch panel; a wall-mounted screen that allows each tenant to programme the heating, cooling and lighting settings for their own environment.

“The Jung touch screens not only offer the tenant control over their own areas,” David Hathersich-Jones continues, “but they are so simple to use that tenants can genuinely make changes as often as they like.  And because it’s all integrated on the KNX system, they only need one control panel to do it.”

In most of the landlord areas including toilets, landings and car park lift areas, the M&E specification meant that heating is provided by wall-mounted electric heaters and these are also linked to the KNX controls.  While each has its own integral thermostat, they have been integrated with the building control system using Jung KNX single gang actuators.  This means that the tenants can alter the temperature of the wall-mounted heaters using the basic thermostat on the device itself but the supply of electricity to the heaters is governed centrally by tenant or landlord controllable time clocks within the building control system.

“The idea is that tenants have the flexibility to control the temperature in the areas of the building that affect them,” explains Nigel, “but that the landlord or tenant retains control ofthe times centrally.  This means that they can be programmed centrally to be switched off at night and at weekends so there is never any concern that they have been left on and blasting out heat in an empty building.”

Fingertip Control
Being able to control, manage and maintain the building control system was very important to Castano and Building Evolution addressed this requirement with the inclusion of a Jung Facility Pilot PC. Flexible, interactive software allowing the facilities team to visualise and control the integrated KNX building controls from a single device, the Jung Facility Pilot system gives the facilities manager access to every control in the building from a single monitor in her office.

Visualisation software means that the facilities team can view a floorplan of each of the Old Courthouse’s storeys on the screen with icons to represent the various KNX controllers installed to make up the building control system.  From here the building’s facilities team can monitor and control lighting (including lamp failure), HVAC, electric heaters, ventilation system, and even remote reading of tenant sub-electricity meters. 

“For us, the Jung Facility Pilot demonstrates all the advantages of a KNX installation,” comments David Hathersich-Jones. “Not only are all the building controls fully integrated but they are accessible on a single monitor, making life simpler for the facilities team and ensuring that the building runs smoothly. 

“Our tenants are ‘A’ list companies that expect a comfortable, professional and efficient office environment and the Jung Facility Pilot enables us to deliver that,” he continues. “If, for example, there is a fault with the HVAC system in a particular area of the building, the facilities manager will probably know about it before the tenant has even realised, helping to provide a level of service that is truly world class.”

Tangible Benefits
Attention to detail not only in the building’s functionality, but also in the finishing touches, such as the Jung stainless steel touch buttons and frames used throughout the office areas, has ensured that the Old Courthouse is impressively higher spec than many of its competitors and has won it the accolade of KNX UK installation of the year 2008.

But KNX has not only been used to achieve a ‘wow factor’ at the Old Courthouse, it has also been instrumental in the smooth management of the building, including significant energy savings.  What’s more, it was fast to install and can be changed and updated quickly and simply, all of which makes it a sound economic choice for the landlord.

“We chose a KNX system for its functionality and its futureproofing attributes,” David Hathersich-Jones adds, “but it has proved a sound investment not only in terms of helping us attract the right calibre of tenants, but also in helping to drive down the building’s running costs.”

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