21 Bennetts Hill, Birmingham

The building comprises an existing 6 storey office building in Birmingham City Centre. The building was served from gas fired boilers located within the basement of the building, providing low temperature hot water throughout the building to perimeter radiators.

The Client brief was to provide office facilities with heating and comfort cooling. Initial investigations with WPD concluded that spare capacity on the local network was insufficient to service the building and a new sub-station on site would be required. As the building only had the main access doors fronting onto Bennetts Hill there was no suitable location for a sub-station on site.

With the Client still requiring comfort cooling Halligans investigated the use of gas absorption chillers to provide the heating and cooling to the office spaces. Performance specifications were produced based on the gas absorption chillers, which negated the requirement for an increased electrical supply. The scheme was tendered, however, the capital cost of utilising gas absorption chillers exceeded the Clients budget.

Following the tender Halligans other projects in the City Centre established WPD were installing additional transformers in the sub-station close to the site. An application was submitted to WPD and a quotation provided by WPD for the increased electrical demand to allow traditional electrically driven air conditioning units to be installed.

Specifications were updated to reflect the changes and the final scheme negotiated with the lowest contractor to provide a viable scheme. Halligans continued to monitor the design and installation through the project on behalf of the Client.