PROJECT FOCUS GREEN RETROFITTING
Brookfield Multiplex Green provided a one-stop-shop solution to sustainably refurbish 20 Canada Square, Canary Wharf. The upgrade included new variable-volume high-efficiency chillers, revisions to the cooling tower and landlord system operations and tenant sub-metering. Significant energy savings have been calculated, with a short payback period of between three and four years.
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
As the energy performance of new commercial buildings becomes better and better, their older rivals are playing catch up – and they need a bit of help.
WSP has joined with Brookfield Multiplex, architect Woods Bagot and building services contractor Mercury to offer an integrated service to retrofit poorly performing commercial properties to meet the demands of the 21st century, called Brookfield Multiplex Green.
“We’ve built up a lot of data on how older buildings perform against current benchmarks,” says Ben Dedman, an associate in WSP’s property and development team, on secondment to Brookfield Multiplex Green. “That’s given us a good insight into a whole cross- section of properties.”
Dedman has found that it’s not always a bulding’s fabric that's the problem, but how it's being operated: “You’ve got to treat a building like a car, give it a service after a couple of years.”
One of his first targets for action is the building management system. “You might find that a building manager keeps the building ticking over, ensuring the occupants have a comfortable environment to work in, but over a number of years small adjustments can cause the systems to move outside of their optimum performance range. You find buildings being heated and cooled simultaneously, with adjacent systems fighting each other. That eats up energy.”
Improvements are not necessarily expensive, or overly disruptive: “We might recommend replacing items of plant with better, more efficient models. That’s often a preferred option because it doesn’t mean making changes to the tenanted space.”
David Bownass, a director in WSP’s sustainable buildings group, says that the return on investment for modest improvements is very persuasive, especially with the assessment tools that WSP has developed. “Energy savings generally mean you can get a good payback in between three-and-a-half and five years.”
Brookfield Multiplex Green not only offers a complete design and implementation service at a guaranteed maximum price, but a performance guarantee and 12 months of post-completion monitoring to ensure savings are realised. One of its first clients spent less than £1m, and will be saving around £250,000 each year. “They’d already done the easy bits like the lighting sensors,” says Bownass, “so we recommissioned the plant and recalibrated the systems, which resulted in a 12% reduction in energy use.”
ben.dedman@
wspgroup.com,
david.bownass@
wspgroup.com
>> SOLUTIONS 09
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