Priva protects Scottish screen heritage.
A building management system (BMS), supplied by Priva Building Intelligence and designed and installed by Campbell Control Services, is helping to protect 100 years of screen history at the Scottish Screen Archive in Glasgow.
The Archive is a unique source of Scotland’s heritage, comprising more than 32,000 individual items of documentary, newsreel and short films, together with education, advertising, promotional material, and amateur footage. To ensure their longevity, this material is stored in three environmentally controlled vaults - colour film, magnetic tape and a freezer.
The vaults need to be closely controlled to +/-0.5 Deg C and +/-0.5% relative humidity, an exacting task as Alan Russell, Preservation Officer for Scottish Screen Archives explains. “I have worked for the Archives for over twenty years and during that time I have discovered that providing the exact conditions required for the archive storage of film and video is very difficult to achieve. The conditions we asked for are set by The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). Archives around the world have found the close tolerance required very difficult to maintain.”
Campbell Control Services recommended a Priva Compri HX8E comprising multiple RS232 and RS485 communications ports and Ethernet ports for direct connection to the TCP/IP network. As a result of a built-in web server, the HX8E directly connects to the user’s PC browser. The Archive monitors the following conditions: dry and wet bulb temperatures, dew point temperature, relative humidity, absolute humidity, and enthalpy; allowing staff to accurately confirm that environmental conditions are being maintained.
In addition, to assist maintenance staff, Campbell Control Services installed a compact touchscreen that gives instant access to all measurements, 24-hour graphs and override facilities on all items of plant via a simple to use, password protected, interface, without requiring full access to a PC.
Protecting the archives is paramount and as the building is unmanned Campbell Control Services has programmed two levels of alarm: pre-alarm and critical. At the pre-alarm stage, the BMS immediately contacts site staff advising them of changing conditions using SMS text messaging and email. If conditions continue to degrade, a second stage of protection (critical) isolates the faulty plant to prevent damage to the archives until staff can rectify the situation.
The BMS can be remotely monitored via a modem or over the intranet/internet, allowing both a mobile service engineer, equipped with a laptop and mobile phone, or the Archive’s staff instant access to the system and conditions within the vaults.
The primary requirement in this installation was the protection and continued lifespan of a historical archive that, if lost, simply could not be replaced. Campbell Control Services, together with Priva Building Intelligence, are ensuring that this screen archive will be available to future generations by creating a storage environment that is precisely controlled to the archive’s needs, providing fast, accurate messaging when conditions approach alarm, and by establishing direct communications between the BMS and the maintenance and archive staff utilizing standard, modern telecommunications technology.