When we think about Creating Inner Beauty for buildings, nothing comes to mind more than designing the mechanical engineering services. More than any other building service design, the true testament of good mechanical engineering design is that users don’t even notice it exists.

Despite its perceived simplicity, there are a range of challenges that clients face when undertaking the design of their mechanical services. These can include:

• Minimising the extent of lost floor space to house their mechanical services.
• Having flexibility in what is documented vs what is built.
• Managing the vagaries/differences of the different buildings services.
• Managing approvals from supply authorities/local governments, including:
  1. long approval times and poor visibility/communication throughout the process.
  2. flexibility of what gets approved.

• Poor consultancy advice that has big implications during construction – such as under sized plant and equipment rooms/enclosures.
• Difficulty in sourcing funding/capital for projects to proceed.
• Balance between capital and operation costs (life cycle cost balance).
• Minimising energy usage costs for electricity and gas.

At DMA, we deliver a range of mechanical design services for projects in Queensland and throughout Australia for both new buildings and refurbishment projects with the ultimate goal of enhancing user comfort and maximising occupant satisfaction.

Complex projects, including the management of large stakeholder groups, are our speciality but our experience encompasses all project sizes, from commercial office fit outs to hospital redevelopments.

The range of mechanical design services we deliver includes:

• Air conditioning and environmental control systems
• Hot water heating systems
• Ventilation systems
• Smoke hazard management systems
• Air-cooled and water-cooled chilled water cooling systems
• Medical gas and suction system
• Steam services for humidification, heating or sterilization
• Evaporative cooling
• Building Information Modelling (BIM)

Our services also extend to:

• Energy modelling
• Feasibility studies
• NCC Section J building efficiency modelling, assessment and certification
• Whole of life analysis
• Witness testing for commissioning works