Business project, Langebaan
Continuity for a working studio
A practice that cannot lose drawings, servers or a working day, given a system it can see the state of at a glance.
- Site
- Business
- Town
- Langebaan
- Completed
- 2022
The situation
A design studio has a specific problem during an outage. The loads are not large, but they are unforgiving. Workstations, servers, network equipment and the machines people are mid-task on do not tolerate an unplanned shutdown.
The value of the system here is measured in uninterrupted working hours rather than in kilowatt hours saved.
What it had to do
- Carry the studio through outages without interrupting work in progress
- Separate the equipment that must stay live from general office supply
- Keep the installation compact and serviceable within the premises
- Make the system state visible to the people who work there
How it was built
Split the board first
The critical schedule was agreed before anything was installed. Workstations, server and network went onto the backed-up supply. General power, air conditioning and the kitchen stayed on normal supply, which kept the required inverter and storage capacity proportionate to the actual problem.
A compact, legible installation
Office premises rarely have a plant room. The installation was arranged so the boards sit together, close down cleanly and carry labelling that tells anyone working on them later exactly what each section does.
Visible state
A system controller was mounted where the practice can see it. Knowing whether you are on grid or battery, and roughly how much you have left, changes how people behave during an outage.
Result
The practice keeps working through outages on the equipment that matters, on a system sized for that job rather than for the whole building.
Splitting the board before specifying the equipment is what kept the cost proportionate.
On site
System controller, mounted where staff can see it 
Main AC distribution, open 
The installation as a whole
Next step
Start with an assessment.
Tell us how the property is used and what you want it to do. We come out, work through the site and put the reasoning in writing.