The Fed Square team took home two of the eight awards at Australia’s foremost facility awards, the Facilities Management Awards for Excellence 2016 presented by the Facility Management Association of Australia.
Considered Melbourne’s most significant public space, Fed Square hosts more than 2,000 events and draws over 10 million visitors each year. Deeply committed to environmental sustainability, Fed Square has a focussed internal team working on innovative solutions to some complex environmental challenges.
The efforts of the team of environmental experts led by Sharon Pollard, General Manager Operations, were recently recognised with Fed Square winning the Occupant Safety & Wellbeing Award for their Online OH&S Warden Training initiative, and the Sustainability & Environmental Impact Award for their Carbon Neutral achievement.
Fed Square’s environmental achievements are the result of a sustainability management plan focussed on the areas of water, waste and energy. Key steps taken by the Fed Square team to achieve carbon neutrality in 2015 included several water saving initiatives; a rain garden to filter runoff from the carpark, preventing pollutants and heavy metals from flowing into the Yarra River; a co-generation plant, a bio-gas plant and an air conditioning control strategy; and installation of 10 beehives on the roof of the Australian Centre for Moving Image in partnership with Melbourne City Rooftop Honey to produce in excess of 350 kilograms of honey annually.
Fed Square’s water saving initiatives include installation of sensor taps in public toilets; upgrade of cooling towers; installation of 85 water tanks to hold rainwater; installation of a 40,000-litre tank to catch stormwater from the main plaza; and diligent monitoring of water usage by the Operations Team, saving millions of litres of water every year.
