Mercedes College

Project Description

Located 6km south of Adelaide’s CBD, Mercedes College occupies 6.5 hectares and has 1,250 students from Prep to Year 12. Over the years the college had undergone much construction due to growth. Looking ahead, they were keen to halt escalating utility costs and implement a sustainability strategy that would improve these buildings’ performance and deliver long-term environmental and financial benefits.

Project Solution

Programmed provided sustainability services to Mercedes College to help them realise best results and savings.

Utilising our Identify-Evaluate-Execute-Realise methodology, we first met with the school to identify their objectives. Following this, a detailed energy audit was conducted that identified efficiency measures and potential costs savings, which we then implemented and monitored to ensure all proposed savings were actually achieved.

Key Achievements

• Multi-building efficiency measures successfully achieved savings of over $45,000 per annum.
• All upgrades cost neutral – energy savings fully repaid implementation costs.
• Online energy metering and monitoring with real-time data now enables the college to track energy usage and immediately address issues.
• New lighting systems have greatly improved lighting quality in classrooms in addition to delivering 60% energy savings.
• Successfully aligned with the college’s building master plan.

Additionally, we offered flexible payment options to allow Mercedes College to fully – and immediately – implement all measures deemed most appropriate and able to deliver the best returns. The college could then realise maximise results early on while writing off costs.

Project Outcome

“As a multi-building school from different periods, we posed many challenges but Programmed’s effective auditing and evaluation programme worked well. We are delighted with how they have helped us achieve savings of over $45,000 per annum.” – Steve Bowley (Business Manager, Mercedes College)