Insights and observations from our practice and elsewhere
Keeping an eye on the energy efficiency ball is crucial during the pandemic
What happens to energy efficiency when people desert the CBDs because of the COVID-19 pandemic to work from home, and then send energy consumption through the roof with their domestic consumption? The Fifth Estate considers a variety of perspectives - including that...
What does COVID-19 mean for building energy performance ?
With the significant changes being experienced by almost every sector of the economy due to COVID-19, we’re seeing a number of important impacts on building energy performance, but its not quite as straightforward as “less people working in offices = less...
Buildings Alive responding to COVID-19
While our expertise at Buildings Alive is in building energy performance, people are in fact at the heart of everything we do. It is people that both occupy and manage buildings and they have the largest effects on energy consumption. By supporting people –...
Our video introduction to peak demand management in commercial buildings
The management of peak demand is becoming a major concern for electricity supply systems as the influence of renewables and residential air-conditioning grows, weather becomes more extreme, and aging baseload power generators are retired. A large portion of a typical...
Reloved buildings: people-powered energy efficiency opportunities
Industry publisher The Fifth Estate has today released its “Reloved Buildings” special report, which focuses on the opportunities and attraction of older buildings. The Reloved Buildings report includes a perspective from Buildings Alive CEO Craig Roussac on the...
Australia’s most likeable NABERS
Congratulations to our clients Brookfield, Charter Hall, Stockland and Property NSW for being rated among Australia’s best performing office portfolios …
Buildings Alive joins RACE for 2030 CRC bid
Buildings Alive has signed on as an industry partner to a major energy innovation research initiative application: the Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre (RACE for 2030 CRC). The vision of the RACE for 2030 CRC is to conduct...
It’s confirmed! Meaningful and science-based targets do make a difference.
Readers of our Insights blog may recall that Buildings Alive has been investigating ways to calculate targets for building energy performance. In 2017, we announced a new technique we have created to set empirically-based targets, and subsequently included this in...
We’re hiring – opportunities to join us
Our business is growing, and we have a number of opportunities to join us on our journey to optimise the energy and environmental performance of large, complex buildings. We're currently looking for: a communications and marketing lead a building systems engineer a...
The smartest way to keep tenants happy during extreme weather
No matter where you live, you’ve probably just endured a blistering few months of extreme weather. At times during the past week, we’ve seen temperatures exceeding 40°C (105°F) in southern parts of Australia and almost 40°C (-40°F) below freezing in parts of North...
What is a target range ?
Just as there is no such thing as a ‘perfect building’, there can be no such thing as a ‘perfect model’ of a building’s electricity use (or water, gas, etc.). At Buildings Alive we are obsessive (some might even say perfectionist!) about modelling, but we also...
Managing energy efficiency in summer
It is getting warmer and humid and we have already experienced some extreme weather conditions in Australia in late October/early November. It is a good time for facility managers to think about how to optimise building energy performance for summer - the potential...