This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
UNDERNEATH Sydney’s new landmark Barangaroo South precinct lies a massive basement of some 77,000 sqm, measuring up to be as large as one of the 42-storey towers sitting above it.
More than 200 people and over a dozen service partners operate within the basement across all hours. It includes the mail room, the loading dock and the centralised operations room and waste and recycling facilities. Sharing common systems and services allows Barangaroo South to maximise sustainability outcomes and reduce costs as 20,000 pass through it each day.
More than 400 rooms in the basement service security, cleaning, plant and pump operations and retail.
“Most large commercial buildings around the CBD have poor ground planes because they have to house plantrooms, driveways, loading dock entries and exits, which leaves room for only a coffee shop or two at best,” head of operations for Barangaroo South – Lendlease, James Peterson said.
“At Barangaroo we’ve taken the plant, access ways, services and systems required for nine buildings, into one basement with just two entry points,” he added.
Barangaroo’s district cooling plant is located in the basement and uses harbour water, which saves around 60,000L per day while allowing the rooftops – which would usually host air conditioning cooling towers – for solar panels.
A recycled water treatment plant is capable of creating more water than the precinct uses each day, with all black and grey water converted through mechanical and chemical processes to recycled water used for toilet flushing and irrigation. It has a capacity of more than a million litres a day, and the plant can process used water from other buildings, meaning more recycled water could be exported than the potable water imported.
Fire, security, mechanical and lighting systems are integrated into one management control platform for the buildings at Barangaroo, the security and the operations teams and tenants can centrally monitor and manage more than one million live data points in real time.
In the last two years, Barangaroo South has diverted more than 2,000 tonnes, or the equivalent weight of about 500 adult elephants, of waste from landfill. Between 50 and 60 tonnes of food waste is compacted and taken offsite for conversion into green energy and fertiliser.
The dock management system oversees 800 vehicles visiting the centralised loading dock each day, and allocates bays by location, truck size and time required from one manned dock entry point. All mail and packages for the three office towers’ tenants are delivered via the dock to the central mail room, minimising runs.
Also within the basement are the end-of-trip facilities, which are shared amongst all commercial tenants. They include more than 1,200 lockers, 1,100 bike racks and 135 showers, and daily usage are numbers are up past 1,200 per week day.
Australian Property Journal
