Revealed as NZ's most technologically advanced office, Vodafone's Innov8 building is a key tenant in Christchurch city’s Innovation Precinct.
The 8,900 square-metre building comprises five levels of office space, a Vodafone Concept Store and cafes. The innovation pricinct itself is an anchor project at the heart of Christchurch's central city revitalisation.The Precinct is designed to create a cluster of knowledge intensive and technology based innovative firms; from SME’s to global organisations, from agri-tech to gaming software.
The Innov8 building houses Vodafone's customer service call centre and other staff that were displaced from their original building due to the 2011 earthquake. It also houses an innovation centre where new applications will developed and tested on their test mobile network.
As part of the building fit out they required a generator and fuel tank to be installed.
The chosen solution was an open frame Kohler 700kVA generator that was to be installed in a soundproofed room with attenuation for the air inlet and outlet. It also required and exhaust system to be installed and run up the outside of the building vertically some 27m to meet the required local council air discharge requirements. Also within the room was a 7000Litre Supervault fuel tank with four hour fire rating and a remote filing point.
Due to tight generator room constraints the fuel tank had to be put into the room before the last wall went in, as it was too long to turn in the room once the last wall was erected. This required close coordination with the building contractor to coordinate trades etc. to all complete their work. Once the wall was built and the sound proof lining was in place the tank was moved back into position and anchored to the floor.
When the building had progressed a little further the air inlet & outlet attenuation units and exhaust system were installed on elevated pedestals to allow room underneath to install the generator. The generator room has all walls acoustically treated along with the air Inlet & Outlet to meet the local noise legislation. The generator was installed on seismic vibration mounts to stop the vibration being transmitted through the floor to the office spaces.
The generator has the new Kohler APM802 touch screen controller fitted for the Human Machine Interface (HMI). This HMI controller is very user friendly and has a graphical interface that allows customisation. The fuel system was run from the tank with an ultrasonic fuel level sensor connected to the controller to show fuel level in the tank.
When the generator installation was completed we attached the exhaust stack to the outside of the building and tested the generator. The generator has connection to the BMS system allowing Vodafone’s Network Operation Centre (NOC) to have alarms and visibility of the generator function in the event of a building power failure.
The generator was operationally ready for the call centre to move into the building ahead of the building being completed, allowing them to operate without interruption in the event of a power failure. TDX delivered the installation project on time and to budget and specification and within the generator room footprint.
