Achieving Energy Performance in spite of complex systems and dis-jointed design

The extensively refurbished heritage government department office building in Canberra's Parliamentary circle, has managed to achieve its target energy performance levels contrary to expectations following difficult design and construction processes, through careful and thorough commissioning and tuning. The existing two storey 5,000m2 sandstone building was completely gutted and brought to a new life as a head office for one of Australia's federal government departments. The building was stripped back to a bare shell, before being re-created to a Grade A office with numerous tenant systems, including a 125kW data centre with a series of complex multi-layered alarm and protection systems. Given the extent of incomplete or contradictory designs, the commissioning team needed to carry out substantial planning, coordination and framing of test scenarios in order to bring all issues to a close, all the while being cognisant of the final desired energy performance outcome and close scrutiny by the Tenant representative of all commissioning planning and witness testing. This paper presents an overview of the challenges that needed to resolved during the course of the commissioning and tuning processes to achieve/maintain the target energy performance outcome (4.5 Stars NABERS - approximately 70-75kg/CO2e/m2/year) after 12 months of occupation and operation. In order to aid understanding, we have assessed the procedures and steps taken against the Soft landings guidelines and core principles