SA L3 DIT Prequalification

BSE’s Adelaide team have received confirmation of an upgrade to Level 3 for the DIT (Department for Infrastructure and Transport) Prequalification.

Within this upgrade, BSE’s SA Team are now registered to deliver services with a level 3 standard, across the following categories:

• Lead Professional Service Contractor (Engineering)

• Discipline Professional Service Contractor

o    Mechanical Engineer

o    Hydraulic Engineer

o    Fire Engineer

o    Electronic Engineer

o    Electrical Engineer

BSE look forward to utilising this prequalification, paired with our teams’ vast expertise and gaining involvement in some large, exciting projects.

Property Congress Gold Coast 2022 - BSE Attendees

Twice in one year, what a treat! The PCA Property Congress is back, and BSE will once again be in attendance.

Our team members enjoying the spoils of the Gold Coast will be Amelia Fraser (National Strategic Partnerships) and Fergus Mactaggart (National ESD Leader). The BSE team are looking forward to connecting with all of the attendees and participate in the thought leadership, networking opportunities and hearing from the exciting line up speakers at the many sessions over Congress.

If you are there, come and say hi!

Welcome Stephen Kozakiewicz

The BSE Acoustics team expands as we welcome Stephen Kozakiewicz

Stephen is an acoustic professional mechanical engineer, with 22 years of experience across an impressive range of industry sectors and all project stages.  Having completed noise and vibration related projects across Australia, Stephen brings extensive project design, technical review and implementation experience as well as contracting and management knowledge to the BSE team.

Stephen’s work-based passion is to create quality and compliant acoustic spaces.

Outside of his 9-5, Stephen loves family, music and native flora and fauna. If he is not terraforming his bush property, Stephen is out bush walking, kayaking, bike riding or at the beach. And if that’s not already a very full plate, Stephen also runs a not-for-profit Aikido dojo.

Welcome to the BSE Team, Stephen!

EY Fitout

Commercial fit-outs are a significant component of BSE Melbourne’s project base, creating exquisite spaces and identifying ways to bring life, inspiration, and creativity into newly updated workspaces.

BSE was recently engaged to partner with CBRE, developing and delivering a fitout for Ernst & Young (EY), at 8 Exhibition Street, in Melbourne’s CBD. This project involved a two-floor lighting and power upgrade for the refurbished meeting rooms and the concierge, as well as a full mechanical services upgrade.

Working alongside the project management team, architects, and builders, the BSE delivery team developed a lighting design, highlighting architectural wall finishes along the executive corridors. Multizone lighting was incorporated in the meeting rooms, providing functional lighting that is most suitable for video conferencing – BSE strives to adapt design to the evolution of workspace usage, specifically surrounding the significant increase in video conferencing.

When creating workspaces, the user experience is always at the forefront of the BSE designers’ minds, across this project, BSE has incorporated new Wavespace lighting. The integration of this lighting design harmonizes with the finishes and allows flexibility and adjustment to create a space and atmosphere to the user's liking. 

BSE thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and hopes the EY team enjoys their refurbished space.

Giving Back: Godfrey Frederick’s Blood Donation Story

People who lived in the United Kingdom for over 6 months between 1980 and 1996 can now give blood in Australia. However, when I landed in Australia in 2007 this was not the case. As a veteran of more than 40 donations in the UK I was extremely disappointed when I discovered that donations would not be accepted from me.

As someone who has witnessed firsthand how blood donations save lives every single day, I take pride in donating blood knowing that I am contributing to society at large.

As of September, changes have been made to the Australian blood donation rules for people from the UK, meaning I am now allowed to donate my blood! Having made my appointment, I went along to the Lifeblood York Street centre, the check in and questionnaire process was simple and painless. Being a tad afraid of needles, I was expecting the blood extraction to be extremely painful (as I recall from my UK days). However, to my surprise it was pain free due to the skill of the phlebotomist (blood collector) and the use of an anaesthetic wipe!

It took about 10 minutes to complete the process and after a cup of tea and a biscuit I was on my way. Job done.

The work of Lifeblood and the dedicated staff cannot be understated and knowing that we have a shortage of blood products in Australia, I urge everyone to consider donating for the good of us all. I did!

The Green Gecko Project

Last Friday, BSE’s CEO, Andrew Fraser and National Strategic Partnerships Director, Godfrey Frederick were overjoyed at the opportunity to host Cambodian Architectural and Occupational Therapy students and i2c’s Anthony Merlin on Sydney Harbour. Basking in the sunshine, BSE were pleased to give the students a wonderful perspective of Sydney by boat.

The three students have travelled to Australia as part of The Green Gecko Project, a charity recognised for bringing effective, sustainable, and positive change to the communities they work with. They have empowered many Cambodian families, living in poverty, to raise their children in a safe and nurturing environment. Through mentoring, training, health initiatives and social enterprises, the Green Gecko Project has assisted in helping families successfully break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.  

Andrew Fraser commented

“When approached by one of our project partners, Anthony Merlin at i2C Architects, we jumped at the opportunity to be involved and organise an afternoon on Sydney harbour. The Green Gecko Project is an awe-inspiring charity, Godfrey and myself were humbled to meet these wonderful young people. I commend i2C for their continued support of the charity and those benefitting”

JLL Presentation

BSE’s CEO Andrew Fraser, NSW Director Stuart Johnson and National Acoustics Team Leader David Luck were invited to deliver a Building Services presentation to the JLL PDS team this week.

Broadcast nationally out of JLL’s Sydney CBD office, BSE’s team used the time to deep dive numerous service elements and important considerations for the PDS Project Managers. They navigated their way through core disciplines, a crash course in services essentials and application in tenancies, paired with discussions surrounding Safety in Design and Commissioning.

Thank you to the JLL team for welcoming us to knowledge share and add further depth to your teams understanding of the role and requirements of services engineering, specifically across interior fitout projects.

R U Ok? Day

R U OK? Day 2022. An immensely important day for so many reasons.

This year, we reached out to our teams and encouraged them to participate in an anonymous survey, asking that they reflect on the past 12 months. The survey asked our team to reflect on how they maintain positive mental health and the strategies they’ve implemented to navigate any challenges.

Today, our teams were invited to listen in and hear the core R U OK? day message – ask, listen, encourage action and check-in, provided by our National Operations Manager, Jessica Chesser. This package included information about resources for personal and professional use if the team or someone they know isn’t OK. The specific video included covers RU OK? recommended strategy to ask and respond.

R U OK? Day Cookies were distributed to the offices in the form of a sweet, sugary pick-me-up. We hope the BSE Community enjoys munching away on a cookie as they connect and check in with their colleagues, family, and friends.

Thank you to TeamBSE for taking the time to participate in the survey, and for being open and honest in the conversations today, and being encouraging and having R U OK? day conversations, every day of the year. Thank you to Jessica for putting together such an informative presentation.

Additional Resources:

R U OK? website: https://www.ruok.org.au/how-to-ask

Lifeline website: https://www.lifeline.org.au/

 BeyondBlue website: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/

Tree of knowledge ‘Walk and talk’

A chilly but beautiful, blue skied, sunny Sydney morning was the perfect backdrop to the very first Tree of Knowledge ‘Walk & Talk’.

Amelia, Godfrey, Nicki and Andrew!

BSE’s CEO & National Finance Director, Andrew Fraser and Nicki Fraser, joined by the National Strategic Partnerships Team, Godfrey Frederick and Amelia Fraser enjoyed the wonderful 6.5km walk to kick off the day, as they chatted away with industry colleagues.

Traditionally, TOK events have always been held in the evening, however, this slightly different approach was a wonderful way to get out and about in the sunshine, enjoy some vitamin D and connect with our industry partners in a slightly different way.

A huge thanks to the NSW TOK Committee for pulling this event together, we’re already looking forward to the next one.

Adelaide Team Outing!

Our Adelaide team enjoyed the opportunity for some quality team bonding time as they took on an escape room, locked in a mad scientists lair they needed to follow the clues and make it out! Spoiler alert: they succeeded.

The Adelaide team were pleased to have Amelia Fraser, from BSE’s National Strategic Partnerships team, join them, as she was in Adelaide for client meetings.

After coming together as a team and meticulously working through the various clues, possibly also paired with a smidge of luck, the team exited the mad scientists lair as successful escapees, they then enjoyed some rooftop drinks watching a glorious Adelaide sunset, followed by a team dinner.

Orlando Cavuoto, SA’s Regional Manager commented,

‘Myself and the team enjoyed the opportunity to share some quality time together outside of the office, the escape room was a lot of fun and it was great to see the team working together and having a good time doing it!’.

Sydney Football Stadium Opening

BSE’s National Strategic Partnerships Director, Godfrey Frederick, was privileged to have attended an event at the newly developed Sydney Football Stadium last night. Reflecting on the night, Godfrey commented:

““Thank you to John Holland for the wonderful hospitality at the new Sydney Football Stadium. We are proud to have worked alongside Venues NSW and provide our engineering peer reviewing services across the project. The stadium looks and feels magnificent and will provide another fantastic sporting asset for NSW.””

— Godfrey Frederick

The Sydney Football Stadium is one of various stadia projects BSE are delivering, it’ll be incredibly exciting to see these sporting grounds and assets used for nail biting, crowd roaring games.

BSE ESD Ventures South

Fergus Mactaggart, BSE’s ESD National Team Lead spent last week visiting our Sydney and Canberra offices.

Throughout his travels he presented to various clients, consumed copious amounts of coffee, enjoyed meeting internal teams, and putting on ‘lunch & learn’ presentations. Ideally with work, there should always be some play too, including an evening of go-karting (electric of course!!), and giving the Sydney team some keen competition on the ping pong table.

Reflecting on his travels, Fergus commented ‘it’s been a wonderful few days, putting faces to names and meeting a huge portion of the BSE team. Thank you to the teams for their wonderful hospitality, I’m already looking forward to my next trip.’

Fergus’s interstate was hugely successful, watch this space – he’ll be venturing down to Melbourne and Adelaide shortly!

Midtown Centre - Urban Developer Award

BSE are thrilled to be part of the design team who delivered the award winning Midtown Centre, with two awards at the Urban Developer Awards Gala last week.

These accolades are symbolic of the ingenuity and sustainable solutions that have been woven into the development of this progressive building. This project is a gold standard for commercial towers in Brisbane’s CBD, and BSE were thrilled to have delivered services across it.

Midtown Centre received awards for:

-         Excellence in Sustainability

-         Excellence in Design Innovation  

Read the ins and outs of BSE’s involvement in this state-of-the-art development, here: 🔗 https://www.bse.com.au/midtown-brisbane

Congratulations to the wonderful team that collectively pulled together this hugely successful project: AsheMorgan, DMANN Corporation, Fender Katsalidis, WT Partnership, Hutchinsons Builders & Inertia Engineering

Gravity Media - Television Studio

Leveraging our core experience with an innovative approach, our team extended themselves to successfully deliver our first ‘television studio’.

Within the Gravity Media Docklands Production Centre Melbourne, BSE partnered with FDC Construction & Fitout, Tall Architects and Gravity Media to deliver this state of the art television studio. Our talented team delivered electrical, mechanical, fire protection, hydraulic and acoustic services for all stages of the project.

The project proved to be a unique acoustical challenge for our team to solve as, the studio was built inside the existing annexe, a warehouse previously built for set storage. The studio design required a ‘box inside a box’ arrangement, ensuring quiet noise levels, necessary for the purposes of live broadcasting. The impacts of heavy vehicles regularly accessing the site was a key constraint for our team to consider, the studios are also located next to a loud, active loading dock, with an extensive condenser plant nearby. Our design team designed an offset to ensure the facility met Gravity Media’s requirements even during high rainfall noise during weather events. 

In an effort to reduce the impact of these challenges, BSE’s acoustics team leader, David Luck developed specific solutions to offset the effects of these obstacles. As a start, high levels of sound isolation were provided to the TV studios and broadcast booths, and the TV studios used a suspended flooring system to minimise ground borne noise from trucks.  Broadcasting control rooms were treated with high levels of absorption to provide suitable broadcast quality sound and to minimise reverberation. Meanwhile, penetrations to the TV studios were acoustically treated, and conduit cabling to the TV studio was treated for dual purpose use, so that external cabling could be fed through the acoustic rated walls when required.

This project proved to be a unique opportunity to deliver a wonderful space that is already in daily use for live broadcasting and recording.

Connecting with Industry!

BSE team members have been out and about this week, attending events and connecting with our project partners and industry friends.

In Sydney, BSE’s National Strategic Partnerships Director, Godfrey Frederick was pleased to have attended Buchan Group’s Hotel Forum, at the beautiful Grounds of South Eveleigh. Godfrey enjoyed the opportunity to gain further insight into the hotel space, listening to the panel discussion on how the hospitality sector can integrate more sustainable measures into the design, build and operation of new and existing hotels. Thank you to the speakers and the Buchan team, especially Valerie Mack and Anthony Palamara for hosting such a wonderful event.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, BSE’S VIC Director, Terrence Hing, Victorian Interiors Group Manager, Andrew Sayer and National Strategic Partnerships Coordinator, Amelia Fraser attended the Property Council of Australia’s Office Market Report Lunch. Facilitated by the wonderful team at Brookfield Properties, the panel discussed the emerging trends across the commercial market, specifically within Melbourne’s CBD and fringe. It was an insightful lunch, outlining the data behind the ebbs and flows the property industry is observing throughout the Melbourne commercial market.

It's a real delight for the BSE team members to be out and about after a two-year period where face to face industry connection was a challenge for us all.

Lumia The Orchards, Site Walk

BSE’s National Strategic Partnerships Director, Godfrey Frederick and Mechanical Engineer, Adam Kelly put on their steel capped boots & hard hats, heading to Norwest, the site of Lumia The Orchards, by Sekisui House Australia.

BSE are currently working alongside Growthbuilt and Sekisui House Australia to deliver this project, (check out what we’re delivering, here: 🔗 https://www.bse.com.au/news/2021/06/16/lumia/the/orchards), so it was a great opportunity for some of the team to get their feet on the ground and have a review of the site.

Godfrey shared, ‘This is a truly remarkable project, it was great to spend some time on site and I look forward to seeing how this residential precinct will evolve and become a wonderful living space’.

Sydney Team Go-Karting

Ready, set, go-kart!

BSE’s Sydney team enjoyed a thrilling afternoon of flexing their competitive muscles as they zoomed around a go-kart track at the Sydney Entertainment Centre in Moore Park.

Splitting the office into ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ groups, the teams got safety-geared up and hit the track. Huge congratulations go out to Sead Redzepagic for winning gold in the fast group, and to Andrew Yalda for taking home the gold in the slower group.

It has been a full-on few months and our teams have been working incredibly hard. BSE are hugely grateful for the wonderful teams we have, so were thrilled to spend the afternoon relaxing and having some laughs as they zoomed around the track, specifically when Andrew Croud, who is a self-confessed F1 nut, slurped down a ‘shoe-y’ to ease the pain of finishing in third place. The team finished off the afternoon by flushing the adrenaline down with some food and drinks, and naturally a few more laughs.

BSE & Team2 Catch-Up

BSE’s Sydney team enjoyed food, drinks and great company as they welcomed some of the Team2 crew into Sydney’s newly refurbished office.

The Sydney team were proud to show off our wonderful new space to Team2, who were the masterminds behind designing this great working area. The design incorporates an open plan, cooperative collaboration space, with plenty of running room for BSE’s various ping pong championships, plenty of funky lighting and a warm, welcoming reception area.

BSE’s National Strategic Partnerships Director, Godfrey Frederick shared,

“We were pleased to spend the afternoon with our good friends at Team2, we really appreciate their vision in creating what is now a wonderful space for the BSE team to work and host.”

— Godfrey Frederick

BSE and Team2 have an ongoing friendship and are incredibly glad to be out of the difficult lockdown times, and able to enjoy some quality time together. Thanks to the Team2 crew for creating such a wonderful space for our team, and for popping in to spend some time enjoying the space with us.

Lumia The Orchards, by Sekisui House Australia

BSE’s design teams enjoy working on unique, challenging and stunning projects, and Lumia The Orchards, by the renowned Sekisui House Australia is a standout.

This large residential development, nestled in Norwest, surrounded by luscious evergreen and a publicly accessible linear park, is setting new standards in luxury apartment living. Lumia, The Orchards hosts 330 apartments, with a selection of 1, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom options, 4 levels of underground basement parking, the development also offers private and communal spaces for occupants to enjoy.

BSE are engaged as part of Growthbuilt’s design team for mechanical, electrical, fire, hydraulic, vertical transportation and BIM management services, finalising the 50% D&C design to construction level documentation in accordance with the Design and Build Practitioners Act (DBP). The project is fully coordinated using Revit and Navisworks.

Throughout this project, BSE identified a number of engineering challenges surrounding the final phases of the delivery. BSE undertook technical assessments and developed performance solutions to resolve minor hydraulic and electrical issues.

BSE takes pride in ensuring our projects are brimming with innovative design solutions, across this project our teams delivered optimisation of the tender design for the project budget and also undertook coordination in Revit, and using Navisworks to iron out potential buildability issues during design.

We look forward to the completion of Lumia, The Orchards by Sekisui House Australia, as it will undoubtedly be a well sought after place of residence for many.

Brisbane Team Event

BSE’s Brisbane team enjoyed an opportunity to kick back and spend some down time both as a team, and with their families. The team and their loved ones enjoyed a ‘Top Gun’ themed afternoon with drinks and canapes to kick off the event, meals were then ordered, and the attendees were ushered in and treated to a Gold Class Private screening of the newest Top Gun film.

The team were all well and truly around the theme with Top Gun jumpsuits, pilot hats and the iconic aviator glasses. The only thing missing was a Maverick-esc moustache to really round out the theme!

In reflecting on the event, Director, Cameron Webb shared, “it was a great afternoon, plenty of laughter and a great opportunity to spend some time with the team outside of the standard work week, thanks to all team members who attended and their loved ones who joined us’.

The BSE teams are filled with talented, creative, incredible staff, it’s always special to take some time to thank the teams for all the hard work and dedication they put in