PROJECT

Westpac Place is the second largest office building ever constructed in Sydney in terms of net lettable area (NLA). Whilst only 140 metres tall, the building provides 78,000m² of office space and six basements providing parking for 750 cars.

Originally Westpac Place was referred to as the ‘KENS’ project due to being bound by Kent, Erskine, Napoleon and Sussex streets, Sydney.

Following Floth’s successful collaboration with Leighton Properties on a number of their office developments, we were honoured to be appointed to the Westpac Place project to provide the mechanical and Building Maintenance Unit (BMU) services.

As a condition of engagement Floth undertook a study tour in 2001, visiting Germany and England to investigate air-conditioning trends and engineering practices specifically the use of chilled beam and chilled ceiling technologies.

Floth worked closely with Leighton Properties to design an air-conditioning system to surpass the Property Council of Australia’s ‘Premium Grade Standards’, all without exceeding capital costs. The end result was minimising the building’s floor-to-floor height and achieving an additional floor in the building, without exceeding the building’s height envelope.

The air-conditioning design was thoroughly scrutinised by three potential tenants including Westpac Bank, who tenanted the entire 78,000m² of the space and ultimately purchased the building from Leighton Properties.

Floth was also appointed to carry out the tenancy fitout design for Westpac Bank. The base building design allowed for the easy modification of mechanical services to suit Westpac’s requirements, including the 800m² data centre, function areas and trading floor. A pair of dedicated chillers were installed to service the data centre and the comms rooms to provide high reliability to the building.

PROJECT RECOGNITION

• 5.5 Star NABERS Energy base building rating.