Electrifying five per cent

An operational flaw in electric installation can turn a huge building into a dead giant. It is worth spending one in PLN 17 to fortify it with systems, making it immune to such risks

Kazimierz Chałupka, Chief Supervisor for power installations on the construction site of the Warsaw Inter-Continental Hotel, works flexible hours, enabling him to turn up at work later than most of the 400-plus workers but he spends his evenings in his office, pouring over design sheets. What does a power installation specialist work on, a dozen or so months after the beginning of construction? "We look at appliances installed in hotel kitchens. It might seem surprising to you but kitchens are very important places," says Mr. Chałupka.
From an electrical engineer's point of view, kitchens are where a number of high voltage appliances operate simultaneously in close proximity and are arranged right in the centre of the room. For the hotel's general contractor, the Austrian firm Porr however, the kitchen, naturally enough, is a small detail.

Up to the subcontractor
Planning and Facility Management Poland's Kazimierz Chałupka and Porr's Sebastian Brasse coordinate the work and assess subcontractor's designs and are responsible for the executive architectural design. ELIN EBG is a subcontractor as well as author of the electric design. It in other words, proposes technical solutions for power installations in the Inter-Continental. Once he has approved of the design, Kazimierz Chałupka submits it to the investor but EC Harris gives it final clearance.
Installation companies usually decide on the choice of power appliances for a given building. Sometimes the suppliers of power systems and appliances pass on contacts from designers employed by investors. Only rarely is the general contractor also the employer.

A tangle of cables
There is no company in Poland capable of providing all the elements of power systems installed in one building. The producers of converters and switchgear systems do not manufacture cables, for example. However, though you cannot eliminate cables in a building you can significantly limit their number. "High voltage electricity requires cables but in order to reduce the number of cables attached to converters, we use busbar trunking systems which send high voltage electricity," says Mr. Chałupka. In the Inter-Continental, busbar trunking systems will supply electricity from 8 to 41 stories. Is this sophisticated technology? Considering there are only two such suppliers in Poland, it seems so. "We try to promote busbars instead of traditional cables," admits Piotr Jarosz, the Centrum Projektów i Realizacji Director in Schneider Polska. "This is good for the investor, and what's more only one other company [Moeller Electric] uses this technology, meaning there's not much competition."

Polish company wanted
The suppliers' market for power appliances such as converters, various voltage switchgear systems and busbar trunking systems for commercial buildings has been dominated by firms belonging to large international concerns. Moeller Electric and Siemens represent German producers, the mother company of Schneider Electric is headquartered in France and ABB is a Swiss-Swedish industrial group. The only Polish company in this circle is ZPUE Wypchiewicz Włoszczowa. According to Zbigniew Kopacz of Moeller Electric, who have apparently captured 10 per cent of the market, "there's a growing interest in complex solutions [i.e. the design and supply of all system elements]", while Piotr Jarosz of Schneider Electric claims that his company has a huge portion of the market and adds that "Aleje Jerozolimskie in Warsaw is simply Schneider Avenue".

How big is the cake?
The cost of electricity in any commercial building amounts to about 5-7 per cent of the overall investment whereas in the housing sector it comes to 2-3 per cent. Inter-Continental is an investment of around EURO 110 mln, so it is not difficult to deduce that power installation will be something like EURO 6.5 mln. Power installation suppliers admit that their market has shrunk by some 30 per cent in 2002 but hope this will come to a halt this year.

Map of a building
As well as continuously supervising subcontractors' installation works and designs, Kazimierz Chałupka is tirelessly creating a fire scenario for the building. What exactly is this? It's a thorough plan of the building, divided by floors, showing all devices and installations along with a description of their performance if the building is on fire. What he effectively creates are maps of the building, including those which operate on a daily basis and are currently dormant, but which spring to life at critical moments.