SBE Intern Blog
Nearing the end
Oscar:
With the end of my time at SBE become more and more tangible (two weeks left!), I have had to think about how I want to leave SBE. In doing so, I don’t want to leave things unfinished, and I want my work to be useful to both Sean and Roberto once I leave. Consequently, this week I have prioritised what needs to be completed by next Friday. Over the coming week, I hope to bring Sean and Roberto up to speed on the inner workings of MUSIC, how it works and generating the SMP reports. This has taken quite some time to do so far, requiring significant research into how certain compliance checks are calculated. I can begin to understand why the training course exists, however for town planning purposes only; it would be impractical to know the entirety of the MUSIC tool. As a result of making it easier for both Sean and Roberto, I have generated a User’s Guide, a SMP (stormwater management plan) template, a database of other tools and manuals, and an excel calculator to compare 1.5 ARI flows for town planning (requirement which cannot be simply calculated in MUSIC). It’s been quite liberating to be able to explore the program and hopefully I can effectively teach Sean and Roberto next week!
Outside of MUSIC, I have tackled a few more projects this week, as well as chipping away at Roberto’s Energy Audit Tool. I hope to run through the auditing tool with him later next week so we’re on the same page, and so that he has no trouble making any adjustments if need be. Currently it has been improved to fix a few formulas, make it more users friendly and produce an energy audit pdf report once the audit is complete.
I’m looking forward to what the coming week brings, and excited for what’s in store afterwards!
Millie
Getting there but still lots to learn – Week without Rob :’(
After opening a cans of worms for the Casey green project, I couldn’t wait till Rob come back to discuss the FR5 energy modelling results – unfortunately he’s having a week off, so all my unsettled traumas have all been suspended.
This week has been quiet, for some odd reasons, it’s either Valentine’s day or the cold weather (12 degrees every morning I get up!) With Rob away I’ve been taking his seat (to avoid all Millie-related computer crashes), commencing on 577 Little Collins Street ESDS, daylighting and JV3 assessments.
If you guys remember my SBE first-born baby the Epping Private Hospital project which Oscar innocently exclaimed ‘WOW! It’s been a month you’re on that’, as we were catching up and he’s on project no.10 and I’m still putting windows on the model, 577 is a similar project in terms of its computer crashing abilities – except there’s far less to model as most of the floors are typical so it’s just lots of copy and paste work.
The learning of this project would be putting in adjacent buildings for an accurate simulation of daylight obstruction. Really fun, when you look up google map and simply surround your building with a bunch of buildings of similar height >=80m and now pray to IES that there will be some kind of daylight penetration through – first-world issues of living in the CBD I suppose.
Reminded me of living in the CBD during my student years and I was staying in this bedroom with NO windows and the adverse effect it had on my sleep and biological clock that eventually prompted me to move. Whilst SBE is carefully looking into living spaces and bedrooms to ensure they’re all having sufficient daylighting, left me wondering how on earth did the building I lived in went through town planning – 915 Little Collins Street it was.
I have encountered questions from people in the industry wondering the importance of ESD, given all the financial benefits and huge savings on operational cost, it really goes back to home owners wanting to go home to enjoy a place where they spent most of their savings on feeling comfortable, and ESD addresses that. Trust me; you really wouldn’t want to stay in a bedroom with no windows.