Image: Rohan Venn
Parliament House in Sydney is a complex of buildings housing the Parliament of New South Wales and is of great heritage significance. The façade consists of a two storey Georgian building, the oldest public building in the City of Sydney.
Steensen Varming has undertaken several projects at NSW Parliament House, including the design works for the new entry Guard House, a review and design upgrade of the external lighting and external Security CCTV system and a complete upgrade of the electrical switchboards, exit and emergency lighting and smoke management system.
Steensen Varming also completed an audit of the building’s Essential, Emergency and Critical Business loads and Main Building Services (MBS) Infrastructure. A detailed assessment was undertaken which involved engaging with relevant stakeholders, reviewing and addressing the new code requirements, best judgement and
new technology. After detailed evaluation of the risks and costs, a new board in the same space was implemented.
One of the main risks was the water ingress into the MBS room via the substation. Rather than just installing new temporary cabling and removing it after shutdowns, the cables were installed in a permanent position facilitating a provision of new dual supplies or duty standby arrangement to the most critical loads for future planned and unplanned outages.
The staging of the works achieved continuity of critical operations, ensuring that the functional operation of the parliament, library and hospital would not be affected. The extent of power outages was kept to a minimum.