allan-wuHello all, I am Allan Wu, the new Building Control Specialist. I joined UHN just a few weeks ago, and am thrilled to be the first ever Building Control Specialist in all of UHN. I can see lots of possibilities here, not only from an energy saving point of view, but also in the efficient operation of hospital buildings.

Before joining, I worked for one of UHN’s vendors for over ten years. I was involved with quite a few health care projects, most of which were P3 projects (Public-Private-Partnership). I gained some great experience from these design-build projects. There was a lot of interactions required between customers, consultants and different contractors to make the system operate as efficiently as expected.

I am very excited to be a member of the Energy & Environment team at UHN! I always believed a doctor would be proud if he or she could save a life or make a correct diagnosis in complicated cases. My colleagues here do a different kind of diagnostic feat, saving lots of energy and continuing to make the system much more efficient with their efforts. They should be proud of themselves for the payback on their time and hard work. It is early days yet, but I hope to share the same pride of achievement with the team one day.

So what do I specialize in? Building Automation is an automatic centralized control system of a building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning and other equipment. BAS plays an important role in energy saving as the HVAC system can consume 50% to 60% of the energy in a building. Sometimes the BAS is set up very efficiently, but other times it is not optimized as much as it can be. The BAS can facilitate efficient building operations by setting up trends, alarms, schedules, etc. I’m looking forward to learning and contributing my knowledge to this role.

For more on building automation, see Mike’s blog “Because You Know I’m All About That BAS“.

-Allan