Principal Financial Group – Building Automation System
Principal Financial Group is a global investment management leader and a member of the Fortune 500 with over 14,800 employees worldwide. More than 2,000 are working at the Des Moines, Iowa, campus. To help modernize its facilities and create a corporate “front door” for the company, Principal chose to renovate over 1.2 million square feet of office space in multiple buildings.
Baker Group was selected based on past design-build experience as a full MEP contractor to provide a fully integrated automation solution that allows Principal to run its facilities efficiently and productively. Baker Group installed Schneider Electric I/A Series controllers and sensors under a Tridium Niagara N4 network for all alarming, trending, reporting, and HTML5 web-based graphics to monitor and control all HVAC and Electrical equipment. This includes the six (6) campus buildings in Des Moines, four (4) remote office facilities located in various states, a Tier III data center, and a 45-story lease office tower at 801 Grand in Des Moines, IA.
Systems on the BAS include HVAC equipment, Chiller Plants, Boiler Plants, Campus utility consumption and extensive integration into Data Center equipment from dual fed utilities through all switchgear, UPS, and individual plug loads. The BAS also integrates to all lighting controls across the campus and does tenant occupancy control in 801 Grand via a web interface for afterhours tenant requests and billing. Through integration with the lighting control system, the BAS provides conference room occupancy data to the corporate real estate team for conference room utilization reporting.
Weekly and monthly reports with utility usage and data center metrics are automatically emailed to individuals for energy use analysis and data center capacity planning. Critical alarms from the BAS are emailed to facility staff and if not acknowledged in a specific timeframe, they are then escalated to a 24/7 global security staff for immediate response. Baker Group works closely with IT staff on certificate management, security hardening of the BAS system, segregation of the BAS on a vLAN, penetration testing, and backup disaster recovery.
Baker Group is currently adding new locations to the BAS network and deploying a sophisticated Schneider Electric analytics package on top of the BAS which will run high level fault detection diagnostics and graphically rate buildings by various metrics and calculate operational cost saving opportunities.
Baker Group was able to consistently deliver high quality, fully integrated automation systems that gave Principal the comfort and efficiency they sought anywhere in the country. In addition, Baker Group provided MEP design for international projects. Contracts were primarily GMP based with budgets established during design. The key team members involved included Jarod Stockel PE, Russ Zimmerman, Mark Jensen, Mike Miller, Ben Ch’ng, and Josh Sampson, plus many Baker Group electricians who self-performed the installation work.