The largest construction site in Germany

In June of this year the New Trade Fair Center in Stuttgart opened its gates for the first time for exhibitors and visitors of the "MiNaT" and "Blechexpo". The technology for the exhibition halls passed their first major challenge. The specialists of the Neuberger Gebäudeautomation GmbH from Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany who were responsible for the central building control systems mastered the high demands placed on them successfully. Neuberger looks back on almost forty years of experience, with own developments in the fields of hardware and software as well as the electrical CAD software EPLAN that the company has been using for more than 20 years being important pillars in their success. The Franconian company, that has been a member of the Weishaupt Group since 1995, obtained its largest single order in its history from the New Trade Fair Center in Stuttgart. The contract signed at the end of 2005 encompasses a scope of approximately 8 million Euros. In order to master the instrumentation and control tasks involved in the central building control systems Neuberger installed about 50,000 data points, about 1,500 kilometers of cable, 500 enclosure fields, 250 frequency converters, 130 automation stations, 50 LON control cabinets (Local Operating Network) as well as twelve master computers in order to adjust, for example, the ventilation and air conditioning optimally to the respective prevalent conditions. For example, 2,000 thermostats are used and 120 ventilation systems are available. The instrumentation and control technology provided by Neuberger controls, regulates and monitors the systems for heating, refrigeration, ventilation, sanitary equipment, electrical equipment, illumination, blinds and sprinklers.

100,000 square meters of exhibition area are available

The overall investment sum for the New Trade Fair Center in Stuttgart amounts to about 800 million Euro, with about 1,000 companies participating in constructing the fair grounds. Even at a distance the gigantic parking garage with its 4,000 parking lots that arose directly over the A8 highway is a striking landmark. The fair grounds directly next to the Stuttgart airport provides 100,000 square meters of exhibition area. Seven halls, each with a floor space of 156 meters by 72 meters, larger than a soccer field, provide the exhibitors with a barrier-free area that does not have any support columns - a factor that impairs layout and design in traditional exhibition halls. These seven halls have a similar but not identical structure with regard to their instrumentation and control systems, since they have differing ventilation systems and address structures and since Halls 03, 04, 07 and 08 each have an additional storage area as well. A further high hall with double the floor space provides even more room. The server room of the high hall contains the management computer for the central building control systems that provides an updated overview of the current status at all times. The modern congress center provides manifold possibilities for a wide variety of events. In addition the heating and cooling energy is generated centrally in its basement, amongst other by means of 3 6-megawatt central-heating boilers and refrigerating machines with an overall capacity of 8 megawatts. All the supply lines, transfer stations as well as enclosures required were placed in the media and supply channels that run under the fair grounds. These have an overall length of about three kilometers long, are 4.5 meters wide and are up to 6 meters high. The individual instrumentation and control systems were discussed and subsequently the required work coordinated in close cooperation with the I&C planning office M+M, represented by the responsible project manager, Mr. Hans Hoffmann. "In our system the ProGrafNT central building control system – developed in our company – forms the core of the automatic building control system", explains Hans Sindel, responsible at Neuberger for project implementation. "ProGrafNT informs about the current system states, stores consumption logs, provides clear and well-structured graphics displays using a Web browser and allows teleservicing, meaning that problems can be solved rapidly."«

About 20 EPLAN workstations are being used for the fair project

"We have already been using the electrical CAD software EPLAN for more than 20 years to generate schematics" adds Mr. Gerhard Friedel, who headed the New Trade Fair Center in Stuttgart project at Neuberger GmbH. "We took a decision in the mid-80's in favor of the PLAN software for the electrical engineering planning work and started off with 10 workstations at the beginning." More than 30 EPLAN 5 licenses are now in use at Neuberger, with about two-thirds of the EPLAN workstations being used for the fair project. At times a total of more than 80 Neuberger employees were involved in the fair project. This corresponds to about one-third of the complete staff. The site manager, Mr. Wolfgang Franke, was available on site as the contact partner in order to optimize the overall course of work. "We supported EPLAN from the very beginning in developing the electrical CAD system further", reports Mr. Hans Sindel. "Consequently we are also taking the first steps to realize the change to the new system generation EPLAN Electric P8. This will allow us to carry out uniform project design and data management from the very first entry to the documentation and subsequent maintenance of the systems. Only one entry is then still required in order to view the data in any mode. The same applies to changes since modifications are updated automatically in all the representation types."

The changeover to the new EPLAN system generation has begun

The first Electric P8 installation was carried out at the beginning of this year. Neuberger is changing over to the new EPLAN system generation on a project basis. Initial experience will be gained with smaller projects, since it must be possible to continue using the existing data, such as the central macro libraries. The Neuberger employees expect further advantages from the MS-Excel interface of EPLAN Electric P8. This makes it possible, for example, to modify cable lists on a laptop directly on site and transfer them later on to the project revision and plant documentation. According to Mr. Gerhard Friedel EPLAN's schematic generator opens up further application potentials to be exploited in the future. "The new software solution EPLAN Electric P8 allows up to optimize instrumentation and control planning even further, since graphical editing through plant schemes is now also possible", he pointed out.