Modernizing a legend

Jul 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Randy Southerland

The Sears Tower, the world's second tallest building, undergoes a securityand building control systems renovation.

Soaring 1,454 feet above the bustling Chicago streets, the Sears Towereasily earns its title as the world's second tallest building. With twinantennas thrusting from its roof, the structure looks like an alien giantof stacked steel, concrete, bronze tinted glass and black aluminum. Eachday it is home to a shifting population of nearly 20,000 people.

As it climbs a quarter-mile into the urban sky, the tower grows thinnerwith setbacks at the 50th, 66th and 90th floors. Astride one third of athree-acre site, the building consists of nine 75-by-75-foot, square-framedtube modules and offers nearly 4.5 million square feet of office andcommercial space.

"We're bigger than most of the towns in Illinois," says Tom Keady, directorof mechanical operations at the tower, who recently oversaw a majorrenovation and upgrade of the tower's security, fire and facilitiesmanagement systems.

The tower was originally envisioned as the national headquarters of retailgiant Sears Roebuck and Co., which once occupied the first 50 of its 110floors. When the tower was topped off in 1973, Sears was in a period ofrobust expansion and plans called for occupying the entire building by thedawn of the Millennium. That balloon burst a few years later, and thecompany decided to sell the building and move its workforce to lessexpensive quarters in the suburbs.

Today, Sears is still looking for a buyer for the building, but work ismoving ahead to renovate and convert the large corporate areas on the lowerfloors into commercial office space. Much of renovation has been in thearea of access control, which has been integrated with HVAC, lighting andfire protection.

Since it first laid claim to the "world's tallest" title, Sears Tower hasbeen monitored and controlled by a Honeywell building automation system.This system was one of the largest ever installed. It controlled all thefire, security and HVAC functions at nearly 6,000 points in the buildingtied together by way of a network of nearly 300 data gathering panels(DGPs). Although the best of its day, more than two decades later it neededmodernization.

A new front-end system.In the early 1980s, Louisville, Ky.-based Electronic Systems USA wasselected by Sears to develop and install a front-end replacement for theexisting central processing unit. The work called for Electronic Systems tointegrate components developed by such diverse providers as Honeywell,Johnson Controls, Landis & Staefa and Trane.

After installation, the tower was up and running on the new front-end unit.The building control console has a graphic user interface and modernsoftware programming support.

The upgrade was so successful that Sears selected Electronic Systems as theservice provider for the existing system as well. Since 1982, the companyhas stationed five full-time service personnel in the building, who joinnearly 300 other security, cleaning and engineering staff in maintainingthe gargantuan structure. The staff provides preventive maintenance andemergency response 24 hours a day, as well as component replacementservices on the entire system.In 1991, Sears decided to upgrade the building control console front-end,which was based on Intel's 300 microprocessor and RMX operating system(OS), with Electronic Systems' second generation and more powerful UNITYsystem. The product was designed to run under OS/2 for its preemptivemulti-tasking and multi-user software and for its use of the Intel familyof microprocessors including the 386, 486 and Pentium.

The UNITY system's greater processing capacity met the expanding needs ofthe tower's diverse tenants. In 1992, ElectronicSystems was again selectedto help modernize the automation, fire alarm and access control systems inthe tower. At this time Sears was in the process of its suburban move, andin an effort to attract new tenants to replace the migrating companywork force, the company formed a management team to engineer and oversee amajor retrofit of the facility's control systems.

Life safety and access control.Electronic Systems won the contract to install an Edwards SystemsTechnology IRC-3 addressable fire alarm system. This system is fullyintegrated into the UNITY front-end, and the equipment is the first of acontinuing upgrade of the fire system.

In a building with thousands of workers and visitors, security was aconcern from the beginning. How do you protect tenants while not impedingthe flow of business? Keeping up with all the people who come through thebuilding's two main entrances (one of which is open 24 hours a day) istruly a full-time job.

Inside, 103 elevator cabs and 24 freight elevators divide the tower intothree separate zones with sky lobbies in between. Double-deck express cabsserve the sky lobbies and single deck cabs provide intra-zone travel. Twoexpress elevators reach the 1,353-foot sky deck in less than a minute.Designed to move people and materials quickly throughout the building, theelevators also create access control and security concerns.

To modernize the system, Electronic Systems installed a direct digitalcontrol system (CSI I/NEL 7700), a distribution access control system (CSII/NET 7700) and a video verification badging system built by GoddardTechnologies.

The tower now has more than 24,000 access control cards regulating allareas of the building. These cards are segregated by tenant and are printedusing a system from Goddard that has been integrated into the buildingautomation system. The badging workstations create the images that arestored in the UNITY system and are displayed upon request on computerscreens.

"We have card readers and all tenants are photographed and issued IDcards," explains Keady. "And as they enter or exit the building, oursecurity officers identify them. The system matches the person swiping thecard with his picture. It's instantaneous. In a building this size youdon't swipe your card and just walk in through an open door. We're fullymanned 24 hours a day with security and operation engineering personnel."

After-hours access can only be obtained through kiosks at one of the frontentrances. In order to get in the building, you must swipe a magnetic badgethrough a reader before entering the elevator bank. A photographic image ofthe cardholder appears on the officer's screen to verify that the correctbadge holder is entering the building.

Once in the elevator, you again swipe your badge before being authorized toselect floor buttons associated with the access level you have beengranted. Access is usually limited to the floor on which your tenant'scompany is located.

The integration of access control into the tower's front-end system allowsfor flexibility and control over multiple functions. For example, a tenantwith high-level clearance could, upon entering the building, have the doorsto his floor opened, the elevators brought to the ground floor, lightingturned on and temperatures in his office adjusted.

Visitors to the building can also locate tenants quickly through a buildingdirectory using a kiosk located in the lobby. This application also arisesfrom melding building functions through UNITY.

"Security has been uppermost in our minds from the beginning," says Keady."Although we've never really had a problem, you only have to read thepapers or watch TV to realize that the possibility for security threatsexists."

The front-end system's framework consists of 14 workstations spreadthroughout the facility and linked together by an Ethernet network. Sixprimary backbones integrate HVAC, life/safety, access control and lighting.One of the six local area networks (LANs) is a local operating network(LON) for lighting control. This backbone is a FTT-10 network but will beupgraded to a TPT/XF-1250 network communicating at 1.25 megabits with theindividual floors using FIFT-10.

A beacon of light.As the biggest giant on the Chicago skyline, Sears Tower is a glitteringbeacon of light. Its tenants use more than 140 million-kilowatt hours ofelectricity at a cost of more than $7.5 million per year. Monitoring andconserving energy, while providing adequate lighting for work and security,is a high priority for building managers. They even sought to findcompeting energy suppliers, in addition to installing high efficiencylighting and using state-of-the-art technology to keep energy use as low aspossible.

Beginning in 1993, Oak Brook, Ill.-based Gibson Electric Company Inc. begana major maintenance and lighting retrofit on all lobbies and multi-tenantareas including elevators, mechanical floors, sky decks, parking garagesand outside lighting.

"It made sense that, as we were trying to fill our tenant space after Searsmoved out, we upgrade to TB lighting, with energy efficient electronicballasts," says Keady.

Gibson Electronics has used new lighting technologies to substantiallyreduce energy costs. The electronic ballasts coupled with TB fluorescentlamps, for example, have the capacity to reduce energy consumption by asmuch as 45 percent.

"We've also incorporated a Tenant Access System - T.A.S. - for lighting,"explains Keady. Now tenants can come in after-hours and program theirlighting. It (the system) actually totals the number of hours used by eachtenant in the building."

The existing lighting control system has been replaced by ElectronicSystems' LonWorks-based NexSys Flexible Lighting Control panels(NXP-FLC-01), which are of part of the NexSys family of building automationsystem products.The first phase of the lighting control project consisted of 14 flexiblelighting control panels. This system provides building management theability to control both individual- and multiple-location lighting on eachconnected 50,000-square-foot floor. Tenants can also control their ownlighting by using either local override push-buttons or apassword-protected, operatorless telephone override system.

Through T.A.S., tenants with access control rights register in a voicerecognition system with a spoken password and then can override the timeschedules for lighting. The system also keeps up with this usage so theindividual tenant can be billed monthly.

The NexSys system uses LonWorks architecture, graphical programmingmethods, distributed nature and powerful 32-bit processor per panel. Whenthe project is complete, the system will have more than 2,000 individuallighting control circuits. The system also will connect and control morethan 20,000 other building automation system points by way of the UNITYsystem.

Comparing the tower to a small city is apt in terms of the complexity ofprotecting and serving a diverse population. At Sears Tower, they have notonly proven you can do it, but that you can do it well.

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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