CIBSE Case Study: Exchange House, Broadgate, City of London

Building Operation Award

Exchange House, Broadgate, City of London - British Land/Broadgate Estates

British Land continues its winning ways at the Building Performance Awards with victory at Exchange House where, together with the occupiers and manager Broadgate Estates, it has made the building more energy efficient and easier to operate.

British Land has cut landlord-influenced energy at Exchange House by 31% since 2009 (with the majority of the savings realised in 2012/13). It has also helped occupiers achieve 23% reductions in their areas. Total reductions have cut carbon emissions by 8,500 tonnes and delivered energy cost savings of more than £1 m in the last four years.

The investment in an energy monitoring system at Exchange House identified opportunities for the building management team to optimise consumption, with successful examples including: reducing how long the air conditioning system operates when the override option is used; addressing an increase in the air conditioning base load, due to a faulty power pack; optimising the heating schedule and adjusting lighting timings and patterns for external areas.

British Land also engaged with occupiers to introduce measures to align plant run times with operational needs, including the introduction of out-of-hours energy billing to incentivise businesses to explore more efficient alternatives to operating out-of-hours; agreeing core hours for the building and removal of override switches on the office floors for heating and cooling out-of-hours.

Broadgate Estates and British Land lead a well-established green building group with all occupiers at Exchange House and provide them with six-monthly building environmental statements. This allows capital investment initiatives to be agreed to help occupiers improve energy efficiency and cut costs.

Clearly, the landlord is doing the right thing: independent surveys consistently show that occupier satisfaction with British Land and Broadgate Estate exceeds the industry average.

Project Team

Building services engineer: Broadgate Estates
Building owners: British Land/ Blackstone
Building occupiers: F&C Asset /Management / Herbert Smith Freehills / Society Generale
Mechanical and electrical consultant: EP&T Global

Shortlisted

Harrods, Knightsbridge, London - Harrods
MoD, Abbey Wood, Bristol - Debut Services (South West)