Multidisciplinary engineering firm, WSP in Africa, is elated to confirm that the PwC Tower received the prestigious Environmental Engineering Project accolade for the 2018 South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE) Awards that were presented during the gala dinner earlier this month.

Located in Waterfall in Midrand, this iconic 27-storey building is the first high rise building to go up within the estate and is recognised as world class.

According to Pieter de Bod, Technical Director, WSP, Building Services, Africa, “In addition to receiving another prestigious industry award earlier this year, given the status of this building, we as the mechanical engineers were honorarily invited to speak and present a technical paper on this project at the ASHRAE Third International Conference on Efficient Building Design that took place in Lebanon on the 4th and 5th of October 2018.”

WSP was appointed as the mechanical consulting engineer on this project for heating, HVAC design, building management systems (BMS), as well as energy monitoring systems (EMS).

The air conditioning for this building was designed to be commercially economical, while maintaining good occupancy comfort and thermal zoning. This was achieved through high operational efficiency, and high coefficient performance (COPs) of the cooling and heating systems, with state-of-the-art chillers and an integrated heating and cooling recovery system.

“For the design, careful consideration was also given to ensure the complete HVAC systems was easy to operate and maintain, with good HVAC system reliability and long service lifespan. We also incorporate good service access to all the HVAC equipment – as it was essential that all components of the HVAC system can be accessed easily and safely,” added de Bod.

Mathieu du Plooy, Managing Director of WSP Africa, said: “We are immensely proud of the work our team of expert undertook on this project and honoured with this incredible achievement. The SAICE Awards are aimed at celebrating outstanding engineering achievements that promote the practice and development of excellence in the built environment profession – and this accolade is a testament of recognition that our specialists continue to do exactly that, with the creativity and ingenuity that they bring to every project.”