GIVING SCHOOLS A HELPING HAND

Arthur McKay FM have been awarded the prestigious Green Apple Award 2010 for Environmental Best Practice, in partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council, for the Schools Investment Programme.

Project Aims

Arthur McKay formed a partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council to improve energy performance across the Council’s school estates, reducing energy consumption and the Council’s overall carbon footprint.  A central focus of the programme was to raise awareness of energy use amongst the property user and empower the building users to manage their personal carbon footprint within the working environment.

Project Achievements

The £2million Edinburgh Schools Investment Programme reduced energy consumption in the affected schools by an average of 8.5% with associated savings of £250,000 annually, reducing the Council’s overall carbon emissions by over 1800 tonnes of CO2 annually.

Less quantifiable, although equally important, were the benefits to the property users. These included improvements to the quality of the internal environment through, for example, improved lighting levels and thermal comfort. In the longer term, the properties will benefit from reduced maintenance and operating costs, with ongoing associated carbon reduction.

The first steps for Arthur McKay…

Creating a platform to benchmark against, noting the performance of various aspects such as ventilation strategies and control, air infiltration, insulation levels, heating plant, etc.

Our teams of experts carried out thermal imaging to identify the continuity of existing insulation and determine the condition of walls and elevations. Consumption analysis, energy benchmarking and regression analysis were also used to gain an understanding of existing energy performance.

Work carried out over the 2 years included:

• Installation of lighting controls and upgrading lights
• Attic and cavity wall insulation, draught proofing
• Pipe and valve insulation
• Installation of variable speed drives
• Swimming pool heat recovery systems and pool covers
• Installing/Upgrading BEMS (Building Energy Management Systems)
• Heating conversion

Bill Henderson, the City of Edinburgh Council:

“Arthur McKay proved very flexible.  One solution, for a major re-lamping with T5 tubes in a large high school, was to work night shift and weekends. Although this was a very onerous programme, as each room had to be completed, cleaned and operational for the opening of the school, it was successfully completed within the agreed timescale."