The new air traffic control tower at 87.7m high is Ireland’s tallest occupied structure & is a commanding new addition to the city’s skyline. The Visual Control Tower project consists of a Low Level Pavillion building, and a 5 storey CAB deck. The buildings are connected via a glazed link corridor and a vertical stem structure.

One of the key aspects of the installation include the high level of redundancy for the mechanical systems due to the critical nature of the building operation. This includes Chilled water system resilience for critical cooling and duty/standby AHU duct systems.

Some notable deliverables on the project include a 23 storey lobby depressurisation system, a curved fan-assisted heating and cooling trench heater system, a specialised sprinkler system, a pressurised floor plenum grille installation, a jet nozzle diffuser installation for condensation control on the windows, and an open protocol BMS system to integrate with the existing maintenance system.

The facility comprises of 3 seperate but integrated building elements :

• Control cab & associated elements
• Cab supporting shaft
• Base building to accommodate staff facilities, electronic systems & mechanical plant space to provide control of the building environment

Key points:

• The building control system is a cutting Edge open protocol Building Management System incorporating sway control of the building elevators in the event of storm conditions.
• The system features include custom built products such as curved heating and cooling trench heaters, curved linear slot diffusers, and custom built trench heating/cooling units incorporating recessed uplighters.
• The scope of works included 5 secure IT equipment rooms with duty/standby Close Control Units fed from duty/standby pipework circuits for added resilience.
• The cooling system features very high efficiency duty/standby Turbocor chillers.
• A monitored bypass shut off damper arrangement on the high level AHUs provides full duty/standby comfort protection for the main air traffic control deck.