University of Pennsylvania's Unified HMI/SCADA System Success Story
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- ICONICS’ GENESIS64™ HMI/SCADA suite
Tech Stack
- HMI/SCADA
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Facility Management
Use Cases
- Building Automation & Control
- Building Energy Management
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn), a private Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin. As of Fall 2016, the college is attended by nearly 25,000 students and has a total regular workforce of over 17,500 faculty and staff. Penn’s West Philadelphia campus comprises 299 acres with 215 buildings (excluding the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania).
The Challenge
The University of Pennsylvania sought to create a unified HMI/SCADA system for 120 buildings, equaling nearly 14 million square feet, throughout its Philadelphia, PA campus. The university wanted the means to manage connected systems via its centralized Operations Control Center (OCC) in order to gain complete visibility into building automation equipment and facility operations. The new system would replace an existing one that the operators found to be obsolete. The selected HMI/SCADA solution would be required to monitor and control critical equipment across multiple campus buildings including those related to HVAC systems, chiller plants, electrical substations, lighting and space conditions. In addition, the university required system-level redundancy in order to maximize the uptime of these building systems. Also, whichever vendor was chosen would need to work with third-party contractors responsible for implementing each phase of deployment and work through the replacement of the entire campus command and control system while all the buildings involved remained occupied and in use.
The Solution
Ultimately, Penn settled on ICONICS GENESIS64. The installed solution now provides an expert alarm system that provides messaging capabilities whenever building equipment is not performing within its operating conditions. With the new solution in place, the OCC can then adjust systems accordingly. GENESIS64 also provided the university with built-in redundancy to ensure maximum uptime. Operators are now able to quickly and efficiently identify equipment that needs attention. This helps to save time and labor costs by addressing certain types of faults remotely using a centralized command and control dashboard.
Operational Impact
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