THE CHALLENGE
The facility was running on 15-year-old proprietary DDC controllers with no remote access capability and no centralized trending or alarm management. Comfort complaints from tenants averaged 12 per week, particularly in interior zones served by aging VAV boxes with failed actuators. Energy costs had climbed to $2.85 per square foot annually, well above the regional benchmark, and the facility team had no visibility into equipment runtime or scheduling conflicts.
OUR SOLUTION
Vertex executed a phased migration over six months, installing a Tridium Niagara N4 supervisor with BACnet/IP integration across all 48 air handling units and 214 VAV terminal units. Legacy chillers were retained and brought onto the new platform through BACnet gateway devices, while new sequences of operation introduced supply air temperature reset, demand-controlled ventilation based on CO2 sensing, and optimized chiller staging. Custom HTML5 dashboards gave the facilities team real-time visibility into every zone, with automated alarm routing via email and SMS.
SCOPE OF WORK
“Before Vertex came in, we were flying blind. Now I can see every zone from my desk and get alerts before tenants even notice a problem. The energy savings paid for the project faster than we expected.”