Defence Science and Technology Laboratory

The new facilities have very specific technical functions such as assessment, non-destructive evaluation, explosive processing and forensic and DNA analysis. The facilities support the activities of various government departments, including the military, and approvals were required by a number of technical/licensing authorities including the RDA and Inspector of Explosives before the delivery of the project could commence.

Each stage of the design was reviewed by operational stakeholders to ensure the latest requirements and maximum flexibility were captured within the design.

The strict legislation defined for the testing facilities within the building meant that the BEMS control of air quality, temperature and outside fresh air levels in response to dynamically changing indoor environmental conditions had to be rigorously tested, calibrated and finely tuned. This meant that a new and refined control strategy was needed to ensure the reaction times of the ventilation plant was instantaneous.
 
In order to facilitate this, a supervisory communication bus was implemented to route the plant information from each individual test area and ensure the measured data was communicated to the BEMS and the users in the swiftest way possible. This ensured that the environment of each test space was dynamically varied as system operation dictated and the users were constantly assured the testing regulations were being adhered to.
 
The accuracy of the ventilation control together with maintaining a negative pressure within the lab area’s meant that this solution ensured the integration between the Mechanical variable air volume system and the various testing equipment were all monitored and optimum testing conditions were maintained at all times.