Sustainable buildings

Speaker: Michael Anderson – Manager, Carbon and Sustainability in Property Services 

Slide 1

RMIT University's Sustainability Spaces. This is a virtual tour through RMIT University buildings, highlighting a range of sustainability features that have been implemented into the design of our spaces.

Slide 2

I will start off with an Acknowledgement of Country. RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nations, on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the university. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia, where we conduct our business.

On this slide you'll note in the background, the image is of a space on our City campus called Ngarara place. Ngarara place was an example of place making, it is a visible presence and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's cultures and histories. It physically provides a representation of the seasons of the Wurundjeri calendar, shown through the segments of the circular design. It is a meeting place for all students and staff, and also serves as a place to host ceremonies, gatherings and events.

Slide 3

RMIT is leading the way in sustainability when it comes to providing great experiences for our students and staff through our life on campus, our sustainable buildings and various sustainability engagement activities throughout the years. We ensure we do this in a way where we are creating practical change on the way we do business at the university. Additionally, of course, we're ensuring we're always acting ethically through things like our investments, our procurement of goods and services and overall governance, but ensuring also that the impacts that we're having in sustainability are beyond our boundaries, primarily through the education of our students and the partnerships we enter into with those outside the university and the research we're undertaking as well. 

Slide 4 

When it comes to sustainable buildings, RMITs sustainability policy really guides us and in how we undertake this. We're showing that in the built environment, we are exceeding wherever possible all legislation and regulatory requirements for sustainability and trying to achieve exemplary sustainability practice in all of our operations. We aim to utilize best practice sustainable design and innovative technologies to deliver efficient, resilient, and adaptable buildings.

Slide 5

What this means in practice, is that we are ensuring that all of our buildings and design work aligns to a number of our key university strategic goals. We aim to be a carbon neutral organization by 2030, to ensure that we are on a pathway to significant emissions reduction. We ensure sustainable design is implemented through our new buildings, whether this be through mechanisms such as Green Star or other environmentally sustainable design initiatives and ensuring that health and wellbeing is at the forefront of this process as well.

These initiatives dovetail nicely with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, we wanted to pull out and focus on number three, good health and wellbeing. So the health and wellbeing of our students, our staff and our wider community, sustainable cities and communities, acknowledging we have an important role to play in Melbourne and the broader Victorian community. Responsible consumption and production to ensure we are using our resources appropriately and efficiently throughout our ongoing operation of our facilities. And of course, number 13, climate action, ensuring we are addressing climate change by reducing our emissions profile as an organization, as well.

Slide 6

The university implements a range of different sustainable design principles. Sometimes these are guided through our large projects, through initiatives such as Green Star, but on the projects that are not targeting Green Star certification, we aim to implement a range of principles you'll see here, to ensure we're building tight and ventilating right, putting in high performance fabric insulation and facades. Industry efficiency in our services design, ensuring our buildings are healthy, addressing circular materials and operational waste. Sustainable transport choices for our occupants, but then, mostly at the heart, is ensuring that our people and their behaviours can be sustainable.

Slide 7  

A quick example of a range different initiatives we've implemented at RMIT over the previous years. Here are a few images of our Solar PV rollout. We've now installed over 600 kilowatts of Solar PV across our university. This is primarily up in the Carlton region. Here are a number of images there across our RMIT rooftops. One I do want to call out there, in the top right-hand side, is our Design Hub where we've integrated a Solar PV into the facade element as well, so this is a very, very interesting research piece.

Slide 8

Large scale energy efficiency. Over the last four or five years, the university has delivered a program called the Sustainable Urban Precincts Program. Now, this was a very exciting program. It was a $128 million investment into energy efficiency. It was the largest energy performance contract in the Southern hemisphere and for the university that has delivered us over 30,000 tonnes reduction in emissions every year and those locked in savings as well.

Delivered by our partners at Siemens and Honeywell we've rollout a range of different solutions here, including onsite generation from a co-generation plant in our City campus. A tri-generation plant at our Bundoora West campus, but also significant improvements to our central plant that sits behind the scenes and provides all the heating and cooling to a lot of our buildings.

Upgrades to our building management systems, ensuring that these are able to operate efficiently, effectively and can be optimized for ongoing use. LED lighting replacements as well, we went through our spaces and replaced over 40,000 light fittings with LED. Additional to this program was a range of different water harvesting initiatives, such as rainwater harvesting at our Bundoora campus and water efficiency initiatives across our fixtures and fittings

Slide 9

I mentioned earlier that the university guides a lot of our sustainable design initiatives through rating tools, such as the Green Star rating tool. RMIT has a range of different buildings across our campuses that have achieved various Green Star ratings and there's a quick snapshot of a few of the buildings here. So the rest of this presentation, I will look to give you a virtual tour for spotlight Green Star ratings that we have achieved recently.

Slide 10 

The first one today is the Swanston Academic Building located at the top end on Swanston Street, and that achieved a five star Green Star, Education Design rating.

Slide 11

Going into the spaces, our space we start often is a portal space on the ground floor. These portal spaces are a really great example of integrating the outside environment with the indoor environment. These spaces use mixed mode ventilation and provide that connection with the outside world, while you are in the building.

The Swanston Academic Building has a carbon intensity of 35% lower than the average equivalent building, through a range of initiatives that have been implemented and I'll touch on those shortly.

Slide 12

Jumping down into the basement, there are a range of different water tanks, capturing water from the rooftop of the building. We have an 80,000 litre rainwater tank that captures water, which is used for irrigation and toilet flushing. We also have grey water treatment, which uses approximately 8,000 litres of water for toilet flushing, so diverting our requirement for potable water use.

Slide 13

Jumping into some of our large-scale lecture theatres. Our lecture theatres are very interesting in the fact that we have the building management system connected to our timetabling system. So the provision of heating ventilation in the air conditioning will only occur if the space is booked and occupied. Lighting and shading is based on outside conditions and the occupancy levels in the space. What we'll see throughout this image is we have under floor air delivery systems as well that creates a much more efficient delivery of air conditioning, right where our students are sitting.

Slide 14 

Going into the office spaces now, you'll notice we have a range of different shading elements external to the building and ensuring we have high performance glazing as well, allowing levels of natural daylight to penetrate through internal spaces.

Slide 15 & 16 

Down to the bike facility. The bike facility stores up to 80 bikes throughout the building. The timber used in this space is re-used post-consumer recycled and Forest Stewardship Council certified timber. A portion of the cement used throughout the construction of the entire building was substituted with industrial waste products from the demolition of the onsite building previous.

Slide 17

Now, on to our second spotlight area, the New Academic Street. So for those of you familiar with RMIT's building portfolio, this is buildings 8, 10, 12, and 14, and this was a project to really turn the campus on its head and open up the external environment to the campus to make it a much more attractive place to work and study. This area was a five star Green Star Interiors. And it was one of the first to go through this program with the Green Building Council of Australia and it was a pilot as part of this program.

Slide 18 

This is a great example of one of the new entrance ways into this space. We used the existing structure and you'll see that through the concrete beams throughout, to create new spaces, whilst integrating significant light wells into these laneways, bringing natural light and fresh air right into the centre of the building. Similar to the portal spaces in the Swanston Academic Building, these spaces use mixed mode ventilation. When the conditions are right, we'll have fresh air flowing right through here.

Slide 19 

Up onto the balcony levels now. A range of materials were obviously used for the fit out of these spaces. In line with the Green Star tool, we used low impact materials throughout. Sustainably sourced timber, as I mentioned from the Forest Stewardship Council, as well as low volatile, organic compound paints and Good Environmental Choice Australia rated furniture. Here's a quick example of some of the furniture used out in the balcony spaces

Slide 20 

Up onto the rooftop gardens now. The rooftop gardens were extensively planted with species that were able to survive in urban and shaded environments. This is a really important point to note, as when you're planting on rooftops here in the city, we are significantly surrounded by large apartment towers. Large apartment towers create shadows and often a lot of reflections, so we need to have plants that are hardy and able to cope with these varying light levels. These plants, as well, help to cool the campus during the hot summer months, especially in early starting of semester one, you're able to find a lot of our staff and students up in these spaces.

Slide 21

Into the heart of the building now. High efficiency glazing has been used throughout, to reduce the solar glare and improve the thermal properties of the building, while still maintaining that connection with the outdoor space.

Slide 22

The Garden Building. The Garden Building is sort of the jewel in the crown of the City campus experience down Bowen Street. The Garden Building is cross-laminate timber construction, or CLT construction. It also uses mixed mode ventilation and has extensive planting throughout. The thing I want to highlight here, with the cross-laminate timber construction is a lot of this is all prefabricated offsite. It really comes together almost like an IKEA construction kit. This building was actually able to be put up in a matter of weeks. It really was a sight to see.

Slide 23 

The third building I want to highlight today, is our Francis Ormond Building. Building 1 on our City campus and home to the central administration of the university. This achieved a five star Green Star Office Design rating, and was the second building, I understand, to achieve a five star Green Star Design rating for a refurbishment of a heritage listed space.

Slide 24

Similar to the other spaces, innovative glazing was used as well to reduce the solar gain or maintaining the penetration of daylight throughout the space, using lighter coloured paints to reflect that lighting through. It included dynamic lighting control systems as well, to ensure that there's no excessive lighting through the spaces.

Slide 25

Really interesting with heritage buildings as well, we increased the building fabric, thermal insulation with rooftop replacement works, while maintaining the exterior look and feel of the building as well. So this is always a challenge with heritage listed buildings, is to how to address the building fabric. This was one area that we decided to focus on, to improve that performance.

Slide 26

Down into the courtyard now. Similar to the other buildings as well, rainwater harvesting was used, so this is captured off one of the major roof areas within the building. That is stored underground in a nearby courtyard and that rainwater is then used for garden irrigation and toilet flushing throughout the building. Again, reducing the need for potable water use throughout the building.

Slide 27 

Here are some of the meeting room spaces now. Low volatile organic compound (VOC) paints, carpets, furnishes were all used as well to ensure that we have a healthy environment for our students and staff.

Slide 28

New stairways were put throughout the building. This provided additional circulation space, encouraging our occupants to use active transport when getting between levels. We also have preserved existing heritage features such as these amazing windows and archways that you can see throughout the building.

Building 29

The final space I want to put a spotlight on today is our new operations hub called OurPlace. This also achieved a five star Green Star Interiors on the vision.1.2 tool. The OurPlace space was an area that brings together all of the operational staff across the university. So essentially, all of those not directly involved in the learning, teaching and research sides of the university.

Slide 30

The OurPlace facility is backed by 100% renewable energy through a large-scale power purchase arrangement, for at least 10 years, to ensure that we have a one-to-one matching of large-scale generation certificates with every kilowatt hour of electricity used. 

Slide 31  

Throughout the construction process, over 90% of our construction and demolition waste was diverted from landfill, done by the selection of appropriate contractors who put this at the front of what they were doing. We also collect four different waste streams in all areas within this building, landfill, co-mingled, paper and cardboard and organics.

Slide 32

We also have dynamic lighting controls throughout the building to ensure that we're maximizing the amount of natural daylight that comes into the space. 

Slide 33

There's extensive planting throughout the space to ensure that our occupants feel connected to nature. This is part of our commitment to creating healthy buildings and focusing on the health and wellbeing of our occupants.

Slide 34

RMIT's reconciliation plan is also used to drive the design of the OurPlace facility. This was through design interaction with a number of key stakeholders throughout the university, who helped to drive a range of different things, such as the layout, colour selection, palette and artwork that was chosen and implemented throughout the spaces.

Slide 35 

And finally, our students. Our students were also actively engaged throughout the design and construction project through OurPlace and helped design some of the spaces you see on these images here.

Thank you for joining me today in the virtual tour through our buildings. I want to highlight that if you want to learn more about our spaces and what RMIT is doing in the world of sustainability, we do release annual sustainability reports every year. These align to the global reporting initiative, and really highlight a range of different achievements that the university has made, but also some of the challenges.

Slide 36

This is part of our commitment to transparency and balance as part of producing this report and it a significant supplement to the university's regular annual report. These are publicly available on our web page, which you can visit at rmit.edu.au/sustainability. Once again, I'd like to thank you for joining me today, and I hope you've been able to learn something.