July 16, 2012 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
Tags: Athletes Village, Legacy, Olympic Park, refrigerants, waste
It is some time since I was invited to a slumber party so the opportunity to be part of LOCOG’s commissioning event for the Olympic Village was very welcome. They invited around 1,000 guests to spend an evening in the Athlete’s Village and to stay over in one of the apartments. A great honour and I thank LOCOG for inviting me along. On arrival we were transported by bus from Stratford station, my bus driver let his engine idle while we were waiting which is against LOCOG’s policy but I was assured by my fellow guests that their busses had their engines switched off. Let’s put that down to fate, the one bus I happened to take had the engine running. Bad luck rather than bad planning hopefully. Progress through security was quick and efficient, the massive temporary structure had no air conditioning but it was very cool from natural ventilation and there was plenty of natural light. My first impression and an over- riding impression of the whole event was how friendly, helpful and well informed the staff were. There was always somebody there with a smile able to help. This contrasted slightly with my experience in Beijing where …
May 29, 2009 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
Tags: Aquatic Centre, refrigerants
It is good to see that the ODA have risen to our challenge to review their chilling options for the Aquatic Centre. It was simply not acceptable to assume that HFC refrigerants with 2,000 times the global warming impact of CO2 could be used in the most iconic building in the “most sustainable Games ever”. There is no decision yet but it is good to see that they are examining the options. We have seen the case for chilling in the velodrome and we accept that there is a strong case for HFCs here. The building has many sustainable features including low embodied impacts and mostly natural cooling. The cooling load is very small compared to other venues. But what about the other venues? The ODA has fantastic process for managing their objectives but there is no policy for refrigerants despite our recommendation that there should be in our report of November 2007. In this case designers will revert to type and design things the way they always have done. We think it is time for the ODA to declare a “chiller amnesty” with their designers to establish exactly what is planned. It should be possible to look at these …
