Volume 20 / No. 1 / January-February 2010 - Plant Operations ...

FACILITIES
MAINTENANCE
What’s in a Name? by Randy Fox
You walk into a machine room with a Work
Order in your hand. You see “pump 1” in front of
you. Glancing to your left you see another “pump
1”. Great! So you call Building Automation
Services (BAS) and are told that there are
actually three pumps using the number 1 in the
same machine room. Help! Further examination
of the work order and perhaps another radio call
to BAS reveals that you are looking for perimeter
heating hot water pump 1, not reheat hot water
pump 1, or domestic hot water booster pump 1.
How can three pumps be tagged “pump 1”? Mechanical
equipment names originate from the drawings provided
by architectural
engineering
companies. These
are transferred to
drawings provided
by the controls
contractor and then
are entered into
the BAS system by
the Direct Digital
Controls (DDC)
shop within the
Mechanical Systems
department. The
DDC programmers
have the difficult
task of making the
names unique yet
descriptive within a field of thirty characters provided
by the system.
Perhaps you’re thinking “Why don’t they just change
the names to match?” That is a good question, but
the answer reveals some complications. Once names
are entered into the BAS system they are used in
many ways, so changing a pump name renders system
graphics, reports and historical trend information
defective, creating
“holes” in the
database. Changing a
building name becomes
an even larger project!
Recently BAS devised a coded
underlying device naming process
to allow for easy user name changes
that don’t cause database problems
when changed. This process places a
greater burden on the installation crew
and we owe a special thanks to the extra
efforts of John Gruden’s DDC shop for taking
on this work
to make the rest
of our work lives
better. The extra
effort adds cost and
complexity to the BAS
programming, but
will make adapting
names to future
changes in equipment
numbering and
building names
relatively troublefree.
The next time you
have trouble finding
a device by its
number, we could
use your help to make our BAS and FMS names more
accurate. We appreciate your patience and assistance
while we are working through this process. On the
surface, it may appear to be a simple issue to solve, but
in reality, it affects databases, drawings and signage
accuracy. Any information you can provide BAS to
make our equipment names more uniform will surely
be appreciated by all who follow in your footsteps!
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