King’s Cross – Operation and Maintenance

We utilised the latest asset management software to implement a comprehensive maintenance plan which was designed to allow the energy scheme to perform optimally, whilst extending the design life of the plant.  Every individual asset which made up the King’s Cross scheme was catalogued in the system, along with essential information such as manufacturer’s guidelines and warrantees, and a detailed asset management plan was compiled for each item.

This intelligent system enabled “engineer optimisation” by combining the jobs into as few visits as possible, which reduced the costs to our clients.  The system also ensured our engineers have adequate supplies of consumables and replacement components, allowing them to carry out their duties without delay.

As the engineers undertook these works, the system created verifiable audit trails of works completed, which included detailed records, which may have been needed for statutory compliance.

In addition to the large pieces of equipment, such as boilers and thermal stores, our team also had responsibility for maintaining in-premises equipment, such as the plate heat exchangers or in-home/in-business Heat Interface Units which act as a link between the primary and secondary circuits.

Our monitoring systems were successful in identifying potential issues which were remedied before they resulted in downtime, but we also had in place in-depth plans and procedures for any system failures which needed reactive maintenance.

As part of our contract, we agreed engineer response times with the client and these were adhered to 365 days per week.  The system could be monitored remotely and should a problem be detected, it automatically sent a notification to the on-duty engineer who could take action.

One part of reducing downtime was to identify areas which were, traditionally more likely to fail and conduct appropriate monitoring.  By having a stock of backups for items, such as transformers we could make repairs in a timely fashion and the combination of planned maintenance, and rapid reactive maintenance ensured the minimum downtime and optimal performance.

If properly installed, a buried district heating network can achieve design life in excess of 50 years and leaks are extremely rare, but to achieve this, they must be properly monitored.  We use state of the art, real-time alarm system to monitor our district heating and cooling pipework.

These systems can automatically alert an engineer to the problem.  This is important as issues with district heating networks can become more serious over time and, if left, a simple repair can continue to deteriorate until it becomes a serious and costly problem.

The new district heating monitoring systems are now so accurate that they can pin point a leak to within 1m, cutting down on costly civils work, and also distinguish between internal water leaking out of the pipe and external water leaking into the pipe.

Vital provided a variety of pre-agreed reports to the client which ranged from daily summaries emailed through each morning to more in-depth monthly reports which covered agreed KPIs, ensuring the client gets the information they need.

Each client is different and their data requirements are unique and we will work with them to create reports which satisfy their needs.  For King’s Cross these included health and safety incidents, critical plant alarm warnings and/or any consumer complaint.  We also delivered detailed information on energy usage and production including:

• Gas and electricity consumption in the energy centre
• Thermal output from gas boiler plant
• Run hours of all installed plant
• Thermal output from CHP engines
• Electrical output from CHP engines
• Efficiency of Energy Centre plant
• CHPQI calculation
• Maintenance works undertaken