Berliner Bäder-Betriebe

Partner: Mestronic Steuerungstechnik GmbH
Location: Berlin

CONTACT Mestronic

Dipl. Ing. (FH) Andreas Schmidt
Managing Director
T. +49 (0) 30 992 744 600
a.*******@me*******.de

How the swimming pool operators, Berliner Bäder-Betriebe, could take a decisive step towards the future thanks to Mestronic and evon XAMControl

BBB, Berliner Bäder-Betrieb, are the largest operator of swimming pools in Europe. They manage 26 swimming halls, 4 combined pools (hall and summer pools) for public bathing, 7 non-public swimming institutions for schools and clubs, and 26 leisure and summer pools. Every year, more than 6 million people visit these pools.

The pools contained out-of-date systems that were used to control and monitor the heating and ventilation systems and also for important pool-specific process equipment. These systems were installed and commissioned in the mid and late 90s. In the meantime, the building management components have reached the end of their life cycles and endanger smooth and safe operation.

During the renovation work that began in 2014, it was noted that a well-functioning and open solution for building automation to ensure future-proof operation of the buildings and building equipment was more important than ever. This would guarantee the effective financial use of resources and the permanent operation of the growing portfolio of pools in the future.

A partner for the future

For many years, the company Mestronic Steurungstechnik GmbH has been working with future-proof solutions for building automation within the scope of energy-related building renovation. The engineering team focuses on building management systems for heating, ventilation, sanitary systems and media acquisition (documentation of consumption during live operation) and the optimization of equipment.

As a competent contractual partner to BBB, the company also recommends new solutions and endeavours to build future-proof systems together with BBB that are innovative, simple and low-cost. Thanks to the many years of experience working with automation systems (MSR), the company is an important partner for the migration of the equipment portfolio. At the same time, Mestronic has been evon’s partner since 2011.

evon XAMControl as a control system for Berliner Bäder-Betriebe

Since this project is not a greenfield site but involves existing equipment that must be integrated into the building management system, a migration strategy needed to be developed for the systems. Due to the limited budget, the decision was taken to not replace any functioning system components. At the same time, as many control opportunities for the building management systems as possible were to be realized, such as changing times of use, temperatures, speeds, volume flow adjustments, etc.
The choice for evon XAMControl fell upon a modern and open system for building management equipment. The advantages of the system in this case were the efficient migration path and the variety of existing connections (Siemens). This enabled all equipment to be integrated into the visualizations and a comprehensive data monitoring strategy could be installed. Today, the entire system of decentralized pools can be monitored and supervised in the BBB headquarters at Sachsendamm, thanks to evon XAMControl.

Successful achievement of targets

The costs for media (electricity, heating, water, hygiene) required for the operation of the pools is a major cost factor in BBB’s current budget plan. For this reason, the optimization of operating costs was a major goal of the migration plan. Thanks to evon XAMControl, all parameters are acquired and documented in real-time. This provides the basis for cost drivers to be found, analysed and optimized.

Thanks to Mestronic and evon XAMControl, the first pools have been successfully migrated and interruption-free operation ensured for the future. Over and above this, the new system also helps to reduce the load on employees, since disturbances can be found and eliminated quickly.