Benefits of incorporating sustainable design: Bryden Wood’s Head of Sustainability teaches Manchester School of Architecture (MArch) students

It’s wrong to think of designers as glorified technicians who turn project briefs into drawings and specifications that can be handed over to a contractor.

Chilled water systems are compatible with a range of external heat rejection options, including dry cooling, dry cooling with partial evaporative assist, and full adiabatic cooling.This allows for optimisation based on climate and environmental considerations.. A key factor in maximising the heat rejection system (with chilled water) efficiency is minimising the heat rejection unit approach temperature i.e.

the difference between the external air temperature and the chilled water outlet temperature.Every degree closer results in mechanical cooling being eliminated for potentially hundreds of hours, leading to significant energy savings.In hot, dry climates, using adiabatic cooling which cools towards the wet bulb temperature which is often much lower than the dry bulb temperature, can further reduce the number of hours of mechanical cooling required.

The balance between reducing energy / water consumption as part of the design is investigated as part of each project design.. Water usage.A growing challenge for data centre providers is water availability.

Data centres utilising evaporative cooling systems need a consistent water supply for process cooling and obtaining this can be increasingly difficult in some regions.

Water stress levels (calculated by UN-Water) are low for European regions but there is much higher stress in North Africa and Asia, which may lead to fewer data centres obtaining water for process cooling.. Space efficiency of heat rejection plant.These include transportation (a pre-fabricated room is mostly air, after all) and heavy plant for lifting modules into place.

Unless modules are fabricated on a just-in time basis they also have to be stored which costs money, especially if that storage needs to be sheltered from the elements.3D modules also occupy large amounts of factory floor space and therefore absorb a high proportion of factory overheads..

If these additional modular construction costs can be offset by large improvements in construction site efficiency, for example by relocating wet trades or complex specialist trades away from the site, a 3D module might make sense.But, with modular construction, it’s often the case that prefabricating comparatively simple parts of a building as 3D modules adds cost and complexity, especially if the required trades need to be present on-site anyway..