Project Profile: Midtown Centre - Overview

Two 1970’s office towers in Brisbane’s city centre are getting a new lease of life, driven by environmental considerations. The buildings are being stitched together through innovative design by Fender Katsalidis architects. In 2021, this exceptional building will be complete offering a single address of 44,000 square meters NLA, A Grade office space, 5-star green star office space with average floors of 2000 square meters (up to 2600). This $175M investment provides tenants and users of the building with first class integrated amenities in this landmark building.

BSE’s team delivered electrical and mechanical design across all stages of the project from demolition advice to reduce waste and leverage re-use options, through detailed design right through to construction documentation and advice.

Extensive refurbishment to a base building structure requires a solution driven approach, from minimal penetrations to increased ceiling heights, BSE’s team provided innovative concepts and practical solutions. The result is significant increase in ceiling heights for tenants and users of the space, made possible by creative mechanical design and planning with the use of Kingspan ducts, low temp VAV and swirl diffusers.

Architects visualisation - external facade of Midtown Centre. Courtesy of Fender Katsalidis.

Project Profile: Midtown Centre - BBC Story

This week, BSE are profiling an extraordinary project in Brisbane, Midtown Centre, is a game changer! See this great story put together by the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-australia-53046883

Architects visualisation - Street view of Midtown Centre. Courtesy of Fender Katsalidis

Our Queensland team has been delighted to partner with this exceptional team and deliver innovative design solutions!

JV Partners: Ashe Morgan, DMANN Corporation

Project & Development Manager: DMC Projects

Architect: Fender Katsalidis

Builder: Hutchinson Builders

Civil/ Structural: Inertia Engineering

 BSE Director: Cameron Webb

Stay tuned the rest of this week for more on Midtown Centre!

We Are HIRING NOW!

BSE are currently recruiting in all our offices! Here, Jessica Chesser, shares more details about these opportunities in the video below.

Electrical Engineer, Sydney https://www.seek.com.au/job/52256680

Electrical Engineer (Grad), Brisbane https://www.seek.com.au/job/52277516

Electrical Engineer, Melbourne https://www.seek.com.au/job/52302755

Electrical Engineer, Adelaide https://www.seek.com.au/job/52238400

Fire Services Engineer, Canberra https://www.seek.com.au/job/52302655

Further details on our Careers page.

National Volunteers Week

Celebration time! This week, National Volunteer Week, BSE are celebrating our team members who volunteer and all volunteers who are so incredibly important to our Australian community and way of life. 

In Queensland, Tim O’Regan, a SES Volunteer for 7years (pictured here with SES Members during an activation, second from right) who’s commitment to his local community is incredible and focused on empowering people to help themselves and others in times of emergency and disaster.

Tim O’Regan (second from right), pictured here with SES Members during an activation. Image courtesy of SES QLD.

In New South Wales, David Luck, a St Johns volunteer for 14 years (pictured here, for a live weather cross with Sam Mac on Sunrise recently), who supports the community by delivering health and community services, fundraising, event support and youth programs. David is committed to St Johns as it is a rewarding way to meet new people, help the community, and save lives through First Aid and advanced pre-hospital care. David is currently the Area Manager for Sydney Central Hub and is a long-term member of the Bicycle Emergency Response Team.

David Luck, (centre back), for a live weather cross with Sam Mac on Sunrise recently.

National Volunteers Week celebrates the significant contribution of Australia’s almost six million volunteers. Each year these volunteers dedicate over 600 million hours to help others. This year’s theme is Recognise. Reconnect. Reimagine. Today is also Wear Orange Wednesday, to celebrate SES Volunteers!

This week, BSE RECOGNISE, celebrate, and thank volunteers for the vital role they play in our lives, in our local communities and in the additions that these values add to our business, RECONNECT to our core ABODE values important by giving time to help others and ourselves (4 hours paid Volunteer leave each quarter), and commit to REIMAGINE how we can support our teams to maintain their Volunteer works.

Chartered Engineer - John el Ammar

Congratulations to John el Ammar, Electrical Engineer in our Sydney Buildings Team, he’s recently achieved Chartered Engineer status!

John has been an important part of our team for two years, with 10 years experience, his professional nature and strengths in critical thinking, troubleshooting and problem solving makes John a valuable team member at BSE.

Out & About - WIDAC Roadshow in ACT

Our ACT Team were thrilled to join industry partners at WIDAC’s first Roadshow event in Canberra! BSE’s Mechanical Engineer, Siti Mustaffa was incredible as she shared her insights and hopes for building the future. Sharing in open and frank conversation, Siti and other industry leaders kindly took the attendees through career journeys, highlights, and challenges faced, and individual approaches to achieve career goals and what drives them day-to-day.

Held in the beautiful Zenith Interiors showroom in Fyshwick, this new and dynamic networking format in Canberra is exciting for us all.

 Congratulations WIDAC team!

Welcome Terrence Hing

We are thrilled to welcome Terrence Hing to TeamBSE, as our Victorian Regional Manager.

Terrence brings extensive experience in building services across a range of sectors. A focus on multi-disciplinary delivery to enhance his electrical background provides Terrence with exceptional project outcomes and interpersonal ability.

A talented engineer, people leader and committed to moving projects towards net-zero energy outcomes, Terrence takes over the leadership of our Melbourne Office in a great position and is committed to ensuring scheduled project work is successfully completed and establish rapport with our partners to ensure they remain supported.

Fun fact: loves red wine and strategy board/ card games.

In welcoming Terrence, Andrew Fraser CEO said:

“The experience in project delivery Terrence brings, make him a fantastic addition to our successful Victorian based team. Terrence’s range of experience and commitment to sustainable solutions and quality design is a great addition!”

— Andrew Fraser

#TBT Throwback to 60 Union

Past Success | 60 Union Street in Pyrmont is one of our Sydney Interior’s team’s favourite buildings. They have delivered multiple projects with partners to bring this building back to life! The building is a mix of approximately 16,500sqm commercial space and 3,000sqm retail space.

Partnering with building owner AFIAA and designer Custance Architects, BSE’s team delivered full multi-disciplinary services for the Atrium which had been built a decade ago. The opportunity to enhance the building was taken and the project team created a new end of trip facility, upgrade of floors, new lift lobbies. End of trip facilities provided tenants new bike storage, lockers and drying cupboards, plus hospitality style changing rooms and showers.

Further fill building upgrades were conducted to leverage the buildings capacity of base building upgrade, entry, façade, lobby space, retail, additional roof top entertainment space

Our partnership in this building continues with tenancy reviews and designs being completed.

A more detailed look at The Atrium: https://www.bse.com.au/60-union-st

Welcome Orlando Cavuoto

We are pleased to welcome the newest member of TeamBSE, Orlando Cavuoto as our South Australia Regional Manager!

Orlando brings a diversity to our existing SA offering, with substantial design and delivery experience in commercial and retail spaces. His commencement with our SA team broadens and strengthens the service offering available to our clients and project partners.

A mechanical engineer by education, and robust building services exposure from significant project experience, Orlando provides BSE SA with true multi-disciplinary leadership, insights, and passion.

Fun fact: owns an extensive and ever-growing Pokémon cards collection

In welcoming Orlando, Andrew Fraser CEO said:

“With a strong understanding of what our SA clients and project partners are looking for, we are delighted Orlando has joined us in this role. His depth of commercial and large format retail experience is a great fit for our existing team, both in Adelaide and around Australia.”

Out & About - PIF Charity Regatta, Sydney

Our National Strategic Partnerships Director, Godfrey Frederick was delighted when Sydney’s weather cooperated on Friday, allowing the Property Industry Foundation (PIF) Charity Regatta to proceed.

Sailing onboard the Currawong, the dedicated PIF supporters boat for the day, it’s another way BSE engages with our charity partners and support the PIF House Program, to build homes for homeless youth!

“What a great event it was and even though we finished near the back of the field, I reckon we had the most fun on the boat and of course its all for a very worthy cause”

— Godfrey Frederick

You too can be involved with PIF’s important work, more details on their website: https://pif.com.au/get-involved/donation/

WiredScore Accreditation

Congratulations to our own Johno Smithers, for his successful qualification as a WiredScore Accredited Professional.

With over 6 million people working in over 60 million square meters of certified space (including the Empire State Building, The Shard and International Towers Barangaroo), this is the global standard for technology in our built world. Digital connectivity is essential to our modern reality, with the goal of smarter, connected buildings providing opportunities for collaborative, innovative and dynamic work. Recent experiences have taught us all the value of adaptability and convenience with work; WiredScore assesses, certifies, and improves digital connectivity and smart technology in buildings and offices on a global scale.

A significant value-add for owners and landlords: Johno can work with you across buildings’ lifecycle to understand, benchmark, improve, promote and monitor the digital connectivity in your buildings and developments. Assets are future-proofed, provide higher rental return for premium facilities and with an improved offering to tenants, attraction and retention are improved.

Professionals like Johno, work with WiredScore’s key principles of resilience, future readiness, mobile coverage, providers, and user experience – providing value-add to BSE’s project partners and users of the buildings, spaces and rooms our team design.

Reach out to Johno to discuss the benefits of a WiredScore accreditation can deliver to your building or workplace.

Read more: https://wiredscore.com/

#TBT Throwback to Domain

Throwing back to 2017 and one of the year’s most well covered commercial projects was Siren Design’s vision for Domain Group in Pyrmont. Partnering with Siren Design and builder Shape Group, BSE’s team delivered mechanical services, power, data, speciality lighting, fire protection and hydraulic services to deliver a fresh and functional design, consisting of offices, meeting rooms and extensive break out spaces.

The brief was to use open ceilings throughout the building and services would need to ‘disappear’. Siren Design’s intent was critical for the success of this fitout, to provide tenants with fresh and functional offices, reception, meeting and breakout areas. This 1890’s building, Wool Store, has been revived with new significance and bursting with life with high quality finishes while maintaining respect towards the heritage of the building.

BSE was focused on adaptive reuse and delivering a sustainable design for the ground floor, level 1 and level 5. The 8,600m2 space was a challenging fitout with open ceilings where the services needed to disappear. Services were coordinated with all architectural intent and existing structure.

While the use of this space may have changed since 2017, we’ll always love what was created!

International Women's Day

To celebrate, acknowledge, and learn from International Women’s Day 2021, we asked the Women of BSE, what does the day mean to them?

“To me, IWD is an incredible opportunity to spread awareness about the many barriers women face on a day-to-day basis and to create progressive change to smash the glass ceiling. IWT is a gentle reminder to look on, in awe, at the brilliant, intelligent and enormously capable women that add unparalleled value to my life and be appreciative of how far we’ve come in our strivings for a better balance. However, it is also an opportunity to truly understand how much further we need to progress to create a world that I would be happy for not just my (future) daughters, but for any girls to grow and flourish in. IWT to me, in a word: respect, progression, balance.”

— Amelia Fraser, National Strategic Partnerships Coordinator

“It is the one day in the year where we proudly and loudly champion and applaud the women we live with and work with while also inspiring others to join us.”

— Siti Mustaffa, Mechanical Engineer

“The opportunity of highlighting and showing women’s achievement and value in engineering and construction industries. ”

— Maggie Xia, Senior Mechanical Engineer

“It’s a day to acknowledge women that promote our rights for equality everyday, determined to give all women a voice to be reckoned with, whether it be women in the highest of career positions to those volunteering their time to improve another’s life. We stand together in strength and stand proud.”

— Nicki Fraser, Director, National Finance Manager

“A day to acknowledge the contribution of women and a focus (through the theme) for further improvement. It’s a day I find challenging, to celebrate women, while feeling the frustration of there being so far to go to provide unbiased and equal opportunities for women and men to break stereotypes of what their career (even lives) must look like. Hopeful of a inclusive supportive workplaces for everyone.”

— Jessica Chesser, National Operations Manager

We took the opportunity and followed up by asking for their go-to approach to #choosetochallenge and call out gender bias and inequality ?

• Always act with dignity and tenacity, if others devalue us we should never lower our standards to suit theirs

• Have a reasonable discussion with someone who has gender bias and argue logically why women are able to achieve the same things as men

• Accepting that not everyone is going to like you for calling out inequality, and needing to be okay with that; once you've overcome that hurdle, #choosingtochallenge inequality is a lot more seamless

• Depends on the audience/ context... often gently asking someone to explain why XYZ is appropriate/ funny often prompts them to reflect.

• A simple, strong 'No' can be helpful as an indicator that a discussion point is final and not a negotiation point

• A honest, private chat is sometimes useful

• I prefer to let my work do the talking - I strive to communicate in a professional manner with clients and colleagues and let my engineering design prove my skills and knowledge

You can read more about this years #choosetochallenge theme, and the important work here: https://www.internationalwomensday.com/.

Cheerful City Walk

City Walk is one of Canberra’s most important public places. Their design and use have changed over the decades to meet the needs of a growing and evolving City. City Walk is a wide, 400-metre-long street distinguished by the elegant, high former entry to the Monaro Mall, which fronts onto it.

The ACT Government committed to upgrade and revitalised City Walk, making it a more attractive, accessible, and welcoming space for people to use, relax and connect.

 Given the significance of this location, our Canberra Team, led by Brendon Newham, were understandably excited to partner with City Renewal Authority (CRA) and Rork Projects to deliver the electrical services engineering and design, including lighting design across all stages of the project. BSE’s design was produced working closely with the project team, including construction to team to ensure streamlined install. The inclusion of DMX colour change LED light fittings was an intriguing innovation allowing users of the space to program the lighting and the ambiance to suit different seasons and activity.

 With outstanding results, this public space redevelopment provides Canberrans and visitors with a true designation.

Photo credit: ACT Government

References:

https://www.act.gov.au/cityrenewal/places/city-centre/garema-place-city-walk-petrie-plaza-and-ainslie-place

https://www.act.gov.au/cityrenewal/blog/city-renews/city-walk-a-new-green-heart-for-our-city-centre

https://www.act.gov.au/our-canberra/latest-news/2020/november/city-walk-transformed-into-a-green-oasis

Welcome Antonino Cascio!

BSE is delighted to expand our management team to include Antonino Cascio, as National ICT Manager.

 Encapsulating our backend ICT strategy into a national solution, provides BSE with greater opportunity to focus on user friendly, resilient, and flexible technology solutions, which operate accurately with our software and application platforms.

 With diverse experience in cloud computing and understanding the challenging requirements of engineering technology, Antonino is leveraging our existing cloud environment with hardware and software solutions to streamline our team member’s technology use.

 Jessica Chesser, our National Operations Manager, said of the appointment:

“I am thrilled to welcome Antonino to TeamBSE, he brings a depth of understanding and a solution focused approach which will enhance the technology and systems experience for our team members. Excited to see where this growth will take us!”

Antonino’s full profile here.

Promotion News!

We are delighted to announce the promotion of John Smithers as our QLD Buildings & Infrastructure Manager. Since joining BSE, John has already made a positive impact on our team environment and brought a depth of project delivery knowledge to compliment our team.

You can view his full profile here: https://www.bse.com.au/john-smithers

Vast volume for Victorian State Government

A hugely successful project, shortlisted as part of the IDEA2020 Awards, it’s time we had a look in greater detail at this fitout completed for a Victorian State Government.

This workplace designed by PTID, and managed by JLL provides the Victorian State Government with over 3000sqm of people-focused areas and bright spaces. BSE’s team, delivered electrical, mechanical hydraulic, fire protection, communication and data, ICT and AV services across all stages of the project to provide the Government with an outstanding facility. Our teams incorporated specific WELL requirements into the final design.

Our team worked with JLL and PTID to provide a sustainable gold star rated WELLS certified facility complete with an integrated stairwell. Higher filtrated mechanical units formed part of the final solution to provide cleaner recycled air throughout the space maximising non-contaminants. High class video conferencing facilities was provided to meeting rooms allowing flexibility within the workspace.

Photos by Elizabeth Grosmann

#TBT Throwback Thursday to Rothschild

A new professional space for Rothchild in the iconic Aurora Place building, required a specific approach to design to incorporate the strong vision and clear user specifications.

Office spaces don’t have to be ordinary to be professional, here the ceiling lines and indirect lighting adds depth and atmosphere to an otherwise dark space. Services in the ceiling are still accessible for maintenance with the use of carefully blended panels.

Aurora Place is a beautifully and irregularly designed building, with curved walls. Bates Smart embraced this shape in their design, to create welcoming curved passageways leading to multiple spaces and hinting at the spectacular views of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge. The hallway is also designed as a pseudo gallery, with beautiful work installed and highlighted with speciality lighting and humidity-controlled air conditioning. These photos, taken before art installation demonstrate the professional aesthetic combined with simple beauty of curved lines, embracing the base building structure.

The space provided to Rothchild includes 2000sqm of premium quality, professional services reception space, open plan work areas, meeting rooms, boardroom, breakout spaces and commercial kitchen.

BSE partnered with architect Bates Smart and builder SHAPE to bring Rothchild’s vision for their refreshed space into reality, with the brief requiring exceptional and premium finishes and spaces with traditional aesthetics. Our team delivered functional brief and initial design documentation, detailed services design for mechanical, electrical, data, lighting, IT integration, fire, hydraulic, security, integration of AV requirements, commercial kitchen loading verifications and coordination’s, integration of systems to BMS and coordination with base building engineers.