The Glass House is a distinctive office building in Sydney’s satellite hub and thriving business district, Macquarie Park. With eight levels of office accommodation, ground floor retail, 350 car spaces and almost 35,000 square metres of floor space, it’s a significant facility that is currently leased to the NSW Government under long-term lease. The property forms part of the larger Macquarie Square precinct and is located less than two minutes walking distance to the Macquarie Park metro station.
With a total capacity of 3,000 people at any time, it’s imperative that the Glass House building operates as sustainably as possible to minimise wastage in both energy and water. Caroma were contracted to install sustainable fittings in all bathrooms throughout the Glass House. Crucially, the Caroma fittings not only had to deliver resource and cost efficiencies, but do so measurably.
To do this, 237 Touchless Toilet Panels, 44 Automatic Urinal flush Valves, 156 Sensor Taps, and 12 Leak Detection Eco Valves from the Caroma Smart Command® range were installed. Caroma Smart Command is an ecosystem of intelligent products that enable building managers to monitor water use in real-time and make smarter decisions that reduce maintenance costs, while improving hygiene and up time.
Caroma Smart Command enabled bathrooms allow building managers to track real-time data on a range of important indicators including water usage, and fixture usage rates throughout the building. Available through a mobile app, integrated to an existing Building Management System (BMS), or on cloud platforms, this information empowers the building or facility manager to make informed decisions in the moments that matter, and drive efficiencies around aspects like cleaning and maintenance resourcing.
A ground-breaking range of tapware, urinals and invisi toilets have been specially developed to connect seamlessly with Smart Command’s® intelligent network, bringing the latest in touch-free technology to the range. These innovative fittings result in optimal hygiene and allow designers additional freedom to create more efficient bathroom designs that require less cleaning and maintenance.
The 449 Caroma Smart Command fixtures and fittings that were installed across the eight floors of the Glass House with three key objectives. First, provide a way to measure and reduce water usage; cutting water usage in bathrooms by 10% and providing insight on how to improve that figure. Next, they planned to measurably improve the tenant experience. Finally, they also set out to help the building and facility managers understand how to drive costs down by providing a pathway to maintenance cost reductions during building lifespan.
At current occupancy levels (which are a fraction of full capacity due to COVID restrictions), Caroma Smart Command delivered 117KL in water savings through a combination of leak detection and optimised tapware usage. The data gathered was able to demonstrate clearly where behavioural improvements in half-flushes and greater usage of male urinals rather than toilets could have measurable impact on water consumption. If these direct water savings and monitored behavioural improvements are extended to full occupancy, the eco-system is expected to drive a total 2,309KL in water savings across direct and behavioural measurements, saving more than $8,000 in costs, almost 2000kg of carbon emissions and contributing 38% towards an additional half-star NABERS uplift.
In addition, Caroma Smart Command provides full visibility on where each fixture is within its lifespan, enabling building managers to predict when certain fixtures will need to be serviced & when to expect their end of life. By tracking ‘activations’ - or the number of times each fixture is used - maintenance can be accurately planned and addressed with minimal disruption to building occupants.
It’s estimated that across the 15 year lifecycle of the Caroma Smart Command range in the Glass House building, there will be a $149,495 saving through insights and optimisation of the usage of fixtures, and $473,174 through the shift from traditional reactive maintenance to smart predictive maintenance. It’s easy to see why, for the Glass House, switching their bathroom fixtures and fittings to Caroma was the Smart move.
