Manage your Hand/Off/Auto switches
BMS03
The most efficient time scheduling possible is defeated by the 'hand / off / auto' switch being left in 'hand'.
Most of your big engineering plant is hidden away out of sight, quite often the first you know of an issue is when the building users start complaining of something being amiss. Typically each bit of this plant will have a local control panel which will interface with your building management system (BMS). When a problem occurs the maintenance technicians investigate, if they suspect it is a BMS control related issue a quick turn of the hand \ off \ auto switch, which is found on most control panels, from the auto position to hand may well bring immediate relief.
At this point their hero status is reaffirmed and the building users are happy again! Unfortunately often they cannot investigate the fault as that may involve switching the equipment off and causing more discontent to the building occupants so they plan to return at a future date and time to investigate and resolve. While the equipment is switched into the Hand position it will override all time schedules within the BMS and run 24/7.
​
At night, when the building is empty, there is no one to notice that the ventilation or whatever it may be is running all night and during the day the occupants are happy, all seems to be in order. Then life gets in the way and they never quite get round to solving the issue. Over a period of time you reach a status where plenty of plant may be running 24/7 unnecessarily! It is with a fair degree of certainty that if a nighttime energy walkthrough was conducted, in anything other than the newest building, that plant would be found operating in hand.
Do you need a BMS company with energy specialists?
Arranging routine reporting on the Hand / Off / Auto status of your plant is your best defense against this. In many BMS systems it is possible to have the status of all equipment pulled back to a summary page to allow easy identification of an abnormal status. Request a report, either from your BMS service engineer or your maintenance team detailing the status of the plant automation, specifically relating to the hand / off / auto switches. It may be possible to automate the issue of this report from the BMS system. When you first receive this reporting you may well have a backlog of issues to resolve but each will get you further towards an efficient building, routine reporting will help keep you there.
​
It is recommended that your BMS maintenance vendors service contract is amended to stipulate a requirement to issue a plant operating status report periodically (say every 3M), this will ensure that the overriding of time schedules as a short term fix is not able to become a long term energy consumer.