Salam,
FREE GIFT FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS and FREE GIFT FOR IR AND IR2
Thank you for coming. Hope you’ll stay.
The Overall Concept
A building is an empty shell without the building services.
We give life to the building with our plumbing,
air-conditioning, fire protection, lifts, electricity, extra-low voltage,
lightning protection system and earthing, natural gas and building automation
systems and many other services which depends on the function of the building.
For example, a simple warehouse with a small office on the
first floor may only have plumbing for the toilets, bib taps for general
washing and maybe another bib tap in case there is a lorry bay outside the
warehouse. Fire protection is important too for life and property safety….
Well, if the fire gets put out well then maybe property safety isn’t that
important compared to life safety.
Some air-conditioning perhaps for the small office. A 2.5hp
unit will do.
Yeah.. Lighting of course, can’t see in the dark, can we?
And the power supply to juice up everything. The airconditioning, the fire
protection fire pump (yeah.. I know), the equipment used by the end-user,
computers and printers and no fax machine. Must got spare juice otherwise
yeah.. that’s called contingencies – in simpler term that means ‘spares’.
Compared that warehouse to say a hospital. Then we go to the
fundamentals.. yeah, fire, plumbing,
aircond, ventilation, electrical, elv, lift, medical gas. The others can come
later in the development of the design.
Then we think.. must do plumbing first then I’ll do fire
also. XY here will help me if he’s not too busy la.. with the Airconditioning.
Lift… Ok.. I’ll ask YX to do… Electrical sure that fella one.. he’s the only
one who can do this… good luck la.. you have like more than 5 active design
jobs…?
That’s the worst case scenario.
Best case?
Ok la.. this is a work of fiction..
Project Manager cum BMS design engineer, engineers – ACMV,
Fire Protection, Electrical, ELV, Lift, Plumbing for this project. Next
Project? Fire Protection, ACMV, ELV, Electrical, Plumbing, Lift. Rotate the
talent. So that they don’t get stuck with one. You can go by project. Project
A, she does fire, Project B she does Aircond, Project C (charity) she does
Plumbing…
Okay. Let’s move on.
Why do we do the designs?
Since we have to provide life to the building(s), we need to
design the life elements, or systems for the building(s). The designs can be
prescriptive, such as Fire Protection System where the design is based on
Standards and Codes of Practices such as the Malaysian Standards (MS) and NFPA.
For MS, the Standards are quite developed, and I have posted the list of Standards
in Part III. NFPA is used only if the Client wants the NFPA design for his
building(s). You may ask someone or google for the NFPA standards commonly used
in fire protection design for a building.
The non-prescriptive designs are the designs other than Fire
Protection, except for Pressurization and Smoke Extract. ACMV, Plumbing, Gas, Swimming
Pool Filtration, Lift and Escalators are common examples.
Design work involves studying the handbooks, Standards and
studying the examples of previous designs – not to copy and paste blindly.
The tools you use to design can be your scientific
calculator, rims of recycled paper or Excel, provided you know how to key in
the formulas you want to use. I’ve put up some Excel Workbooks in Bicara
Jurutera, such as Plumbing Workbook 2020 (I have the 2021r3 for those who are
interested), ACMV Water side for anything to do with water for the Air-conditioning
system, including the chilled water pipe sizing or condenser water sizing or
cooling tower make-up tank sizing. Just to make our jobs easier. Oh yes, I also
posted the Control Panel sizing Excel. Good for the Electricals but the very
best for the Mechanicals because… they don’t become Mechanical Engineers to
become Electrical Engineers. So a bit of help would be super. Thanks!
For ACMV, well, some engineers still use the E-20 form you find
in the Carrier Load Sizing Handbook (published in the 70s when the size of a computer
could be the size of a ………m x ………….m x …………..m.)
Please use the software. Carrier has one. Trane has one and you may check with Mitsubishi Electric too. With all the geniuses we have on earth, there’re very limited publishers I know. Only those three. Revit? Yeah. I heard Revit could do it but not every consulting firm can afford Revit and most importantly a creative, hardworking and has the best attention-to-detail on the block The Modeller.. he may not be at site with you but he works his genius at his Workstation and he is an Engineer and imagine this.. he can tapau both M&E. How much salary shall we pay to this Engineer?
I think non-graphical softwares like the ones I mentioned above
should be okay. No need to be so fancy. As long as the inputs are correct (pls
don’t assume too much..), so… measure the walls, windows, roof, partitions,
slab on grade, ……………). People playing bowling, People dating at restaurants,
People chit-chatting by the water-cooler at the office, People in the kitchen
preparing a wonderful meal to the patrons of a restaurant. Building Fabric, Schedules,
Types of windows, U-value, Shading Coefficient, I don’t know if they have SHG
or not but maybe they do now.. so have to check that expiry thing and call
Vendor if auth code kaput.
Nothing much on plumbing because they’re not that free, but
there’re cool apps on Google Play (sorry, non-iOs here) where you can get a
good one and it’s based on Darcy-Weisbach formula. That formula I tell you.. I
want to make Excel also difficult. Once I compared the results of the app and
my infamous Plumbing Handbook and for the same flow, same diameter same
roughness coefficient, same every thing and the difference? Not big enough to
cause a major surge issue but small enough for you to run your rain shower. So…
the choice is yours.
I also have a Gas Workbook but it’s complicated especially
designing for 7 kitchens including banquet, banquet backup, staff canteen, room
service, Chinese restaurant, Japanese Restaurant and All Day Dining. Plus
laundry too. That’s it.
But you’re an engineer right? You are born to get your body
embraced by complications, with Allah SWT's Will. Insha Allah, you may contact me for details.
One gentle reminder though – use wisely. It’s just a tool
and if in doubt, check the formula and the relationships thoroughly. That’s why
you must learn Spreadsheets. It’s a powerful tool. Besides, I don’t have any
hidden rows or columns nor many protected cells. I protect those cells so that I
won’t mess up the cell with accidental keyboard presses. Yeah. I wrote it for myself..
at first in wow.. 1996 and continued on to develop it myself with input from colleagues at the offices
I’ve worked at. 24 years ago. Alhamdulillah.
For fire protection, well.. NFPA-based got la but MS? Excel la jugak kan? 500mbar thing? Other than that would the softwares the Clean Agent Vendors use, which are proprietary and I don’t think they sell it to you. Cari makan ma.
That’s why you must learn
and be skilfull with Spreadsheets. It’s not just =j^(sum(A34:A58)). It’s also a
vlookup, match and index. If you love it, you might be thinking always about
writing a workbook to make your job easy but since other engineers can benefit
from it, please go ahead, insha Allah.
So. I think you had enough
information for today. Thank you so very much for reaching this end. To be
continued in future post(s).
Thank you, Electrical Engineers,
Irs and Ir2s for reading this piece. Mechanical Graduate (fresh)
Engineers? Allah SWT has inspired me to write with you all in mind, so no ‘thank you’. Just hugs. Alhamdulillah.
Allah SWT knows best.
May we all be guided by Allah SWT, insha Allah. Amin.
Peace,
Wassalam,
FbI
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