Bethel Children’s Center

New standards and a lot of heart for kids

Colorful, maritime, joyful – with its bright outer shell, reception area designed as a water world and animal guides to point the way, the new children’s center in the Evangelical Hospital Bethel, Bielefeld is taking extraordinary and pioneering new paths: moving away from an intimidating hospital atmosphere to an appealing space that puts the child at the center of things. As well as the child-friendly design, the clinic relies on safe and modern technical features that are brought together and managed by innovative building automation from Kieback&Peter.

As well as providing intelligent building technology, Kieback&Peter has also gotten involved in the overall Bethel Children’s Center project in a social capacity. The experts in smart building solutions assist with the range of support services provided by the foundation HUMOR HILFT HEILEN (HHH, or “Humor Helps Healing” in English), which was started by Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen, helping to ensure a healing social environment alongside a safe and hygienic indoor climate.

Health protection and hygienic air-conditioning

“Due to the stipulated hygiene and safety requirements, new clinical buildings are among the most challenging of construction projects,” explains Rafael Dalbke. He continues: “The precision conditions are sometimes so complex that they can only be reliably achieved without any issue by basing them on a high-performance automation solution.”

The EvKB has had a valuable collaboration with Kieback&Peter for 20 years, establishing a long-term basis of trust in matters of smart technology and staff expertise. As a result, Kieback&Peter was commissioned with the task of installing a complex building automation system with a connection to the facilities and including higher-level management and operating equipment in the newly built Bethel Children’s Center. It was intended to serve as an interface for linking the facilities of the HVAC systems, heating, cooling, underground parking lot smoke extraction and electronic areas to each other and controlling and monitoring them.

That means the building automation from Kieback&Peter not only provides comfortable and energy-efficient air-conditioning in the clinic, but also ensures health protection and safety in terms of hygienic ventilation technology and fire protection. 

High Safety and Hygiene Requirements in Critical Infrastructure

The team around Rafael Dalbke (Bielefeld branch) showed great dedication and commitment in developing a suitable holistic automation solution for this challenging project, meeting the technical, climatic and hygiene requirements and safety standards needed in a children’s hospital. For instance, three technology centers with six automation focal points were set up and nine Kieback&Peter DDC4000e automation stations were installed in around 30 switch cabinet fields. In total, the expert staff installed around 1450 physical and 1650 communication data points and around 150 input and output modules with an integrated manual operation level. 

Qanteon – Flexible to Use and Easy to Operate

Since the Bethel Children’s Center opened, the Kieback&Peter BMS (building management system) Qanteon has taken over the specifically tailored, health-focused and economical operation of the building services. Its user interface is designed to be simple and user friendly and helps staff on the Facility Management team to quickly record and monitor all the operating states and energy flows in each technical center via a 22" panel PC.

In addition, a secure VPN tunnel lets the Kieback&Peter team intervene via remote access if required. Thanks to its scalability, Qanteon can be used in a variety of different building types and enables the integration of cross-facility building systems. All the user interface and IT infrastructure functions have been adapted to the specific requirements of the children’s clinic. 

Safety during hospital operations

Safe Ventilation in the Operating Room

Four full air-conditioning systems and 21 zonal devices provide the air-conditioning in the children’s center – managed by the Kieback&Peter building automation. To ensure the highest hygiene safety standards for both little patients and medical personnel in the operating room, Qanteon is also responsible for the challenging task of controlling and monitoring the sterile air-conditioning, which is stringently regulated through statutory provisions. One zonal device for air circulation and one zonal device for ventilation in the operating room are installed in the ceiling. The low-turbulence displacement flow blows all the sterile air into the operating room through high-performance particulate air filters.

Digital Fire Protection with a High Degree of Safety

Kieback&Peter ensures safety in the event of fire and excessive exhaust gas pollution: the BMS controls the fire dampers throughout the building and the smoke extraction vents in the underground parking lot. To make sure the latter works without fail, the team uses the Agnosys fire safety system. It means a life-saving operation does not have to be aborted immediately in the event of fire. Around 220 Agnosys fire damper modules and 6 fire damper bus controllers, which are certified with a high level of safety, are installed for this purpose.

Maximum Reliability

“Our building automation forms the essential backbone of smooth clinic operations, so the clinic can fully protect people’s safety and health. The failure rate of our automation stations is close to zero, which means we can meet our obligations in this regard with maximum reliability,” explains Holger Flachmann, Project Manager at Kieback&Peter Bielefeld. Even in the event of network failures and more, the automation stations continue to run autonomously.