King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Firstco Design Team commence Systems Integration role on $10bn university

Firstco have brought to KAUST the experience of having recently and successfully delivered integrated control systems and control rooms for Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and Heathrow Express projects using its value-assured engineering process—successfully delivering complex projects on time, within budget and overseeing the transition of construction into full operation.

Firstco were invited by Infocon (the largest Tridium integrator in the Asia-Pacific) to work with them on KAUST – King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. KAUST is a LEED platinum project, being built by ARAMCO, valued at $10bn and covering over 1m sq ft of modern building and laboratory space. The complex will contain state of the art facilities including solar power generation and modern laboratories.

The initial assignment will require a Firstco design team to operate out of the Paris offices of Oger International (Honeywell’s partners for the project) to complete the detailed design of the Integrated Campus Automation System (ICAS), which will be housed in a new command and control centre.

Firstco’s brief on Phase 1, which will be complete by the end of June 2009, involves integrating BMS (Alerton – approximately 120,000 i/o), lighting control (Lutron – 50,000 i/o), power monitoring (Group Schneider – 20,000 i/o) and fire detection (Tyco – 20,000 i/o) across 24 buildings onto the ICAS Tridium head-end. Tridium is powered by Niagara software and it a fully owned subisidiary of Honeywell International.

In addition to its systems engineering role, Firstco is also providing a web-based portal for KAUST to facilitate collaborative working by the international design team. The solution uses Microsoft Sharepoint as the platform, with dedicated servers in Firstco’s London office. The advantage of this system is strict adherence to version control of the output documentation that also allows the client team to review, comment and approve at each stage of the V life-cycle, from anywhere in the world.