Out of Gas?

Right on Q

The new 6 star Green Star rated, mass timber constructed Q Building reflects the University of Newcastle’s aspiration to display innovation within the built form, so as to inspire innovation in building use.

Designed by EJE Architecture and built by Hansen Yuncken, the Q Building represents the first stage of the University’s new Honeysuckle City Campus.

Accommodating the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences (HCISS) and Integrated Innovation Network (I2N) hub, the building sets a new sustainability benchmark for the Newcastle region and regional NSW more broadly.

Sustainability features include a mass timber glulam (glued laminated timber) structure, solar PV array, 100% renewable electricity supply and innovative electrochromic glazing on the building façade that maintains transparency while reducing peak thermal load.

This innovative façade solution by sustainability consultant WSP allowed for the mechanical services systems to be designed to a lower peak load, delivering energy efficiency savings year round.

A.G. Coombs Advisory was appointed as the watching brief consultant on the project, as well as the independent commissioning agent (ICA) from the beginning of the project’s detailed design phase.

“While the involvement of an ICA within the project from design through to post-construction was a direct Green Star credit requirement, our involvement through the design, commissioning and tuning phases provided continuity that might otherwise have been lost,” says Andrew Bagnall, Leader – Technical Advice (NSW/ACT) at A.G. Coombs Advisory. Responsible for the review of all engineering services commissioning within the building including mechanical, electrical, hydraulics, fire and vertical transportation, the Advisory team was also – somewhat unusually – charged with reviewing the commissioning of the electrochromic façade.

“Although, in theory, the electrochromic technology circumvented any issues with NCC Section J compliance – and was modelled to enable the building to meet its challenging sustainability targets – the solution had never been tested at scale in the southern hemisphere in this manner.”

The relationship between the operation of the façade and the building’s mechanical services was critical in ensuring that both thermal comfort conditions and energy efficiency targets were achieved.

Should the glazing have failed to perform as expected, there was a risk that the mechanical services systems would be undersized and consequently lead to poor thermal comfort and high energy use. Additionally, the glazing performance impacts the daylight harvesting system, so a careful balance was sought between all three systems to optimise the performance of the building.

Any concerns about the performance of the electrochromic façade and it’s interaction with the mechanical services systems have been allayed since construction of the Q Building reached practical completion in 2021. “The building genuinely does respond very differently to ambient conditions and solar loads compared with conventional shading and static glazing solutions,” says Andrew. “In this regard, it has been a very interesting building to work with.”

The Q Building opened to students ahead of Semester 1 classes commencing in late-February 2022.

“Thanks to the contribution of project partners like A.G. Coombs Advisory, the Q Building not only demonstrates the University’s commitment to sustainability but represents a significant step towards achieving carbon neutrality by 2025,” says Damian Burke, NeW Futures Capital Projects Director at the University of Newcastle.

Energy Model

With no comparable benchmarking data available to gauge the performance of the building systems through commissioning and tuning, A.G. Coombs Advisory identified the need for an as-built energy model to be produced.

The model proved to be a very valuable tool as the tuning period wore on, providing a granular breakdown of energy consumption projections by end-use system to match the sub-metering breakdown of the Q Building.

By obtaining updated monthly energy modelling projections that matched the metering structure from WSP on practical completion, the ICA team was able to benchmark the performance of each building system down to individual plant items from the first month of the tuning period.

Representing world leading status for healthy, resilient, positive buildings and places Building Q is the first building in regional NSW to achieve a 6 Star Green Star ‘Design and As Built’ certified rating.

EDUCATION

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High Ambitions

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