So on Tuesday this week we went as a class to the Portside building in town to get an insight into the Facilities Management that went into running such a large building.

The building itself is architecturally beautiful and towers over many of the buildings around it. The building has around 30 floors and is jointly owned by Old Mutual and RMB. Each of the halts have their own entrances and separate lift systems. The building has around 3.3 bays for ever 100m square of space.

Portside is a 5 Star Green Rated building.


When we first arrived we were shows the 'waste room' where they sort out all of the refuse of the building into different sections of recycling. This room is sorted once a day.

We were then shoed the BMS system which basically controls all the Aircon in the building. It was really interesting to find out that not only do they allow for a certain amount of fresh natural air to be flow through the building but also that the Aircons themselves can only be activated if their sensors pick up movement in the area.

We were then taken to the Diesel Storage room which hold a 23000l diesel tank which can be seen in the image below.

This diesel tank pumps up diesel to the four 1250 KVA generators which are located on the 7th floor of the building. Off one tank alone the generators could power the building for up to 2 days but the tank can also be refilled without having to turn the generators off. Here is a picture of one of the generators. Its the biggest generator I've ever seen!

We were then taken to see how the building utilises the rain water and re-uses water form the sinks to be reused in the toilets. It was really interesting to see how they tried to utilise as much as they could to prevent wastage. It was also interesting to find out that in the case of a fire this water is not used as it simply just isn't enough. You can see the waste water storage tanks in the image below:

After being shown more of the ins and outs of how the building runs we were taken to see an empty office on the 15th floor. This is where most of the students were most excited about and it kind of sparked some inspiration in us to start a business (well it did for me at least).

When the tour was coming to an end, I remembered that whenever I drive past the building, I always see people cleaning the outside glass. I asked the Facilities Manger how often they get the glass cleaned and to my surprise they actually employ glass cleaners full time! He says that it cost them around R80k a month just to clean  the glass and that they have over 300 different ropes for cleaning!
This got me thinking that even though the glass is great for allowing in natural light and reducing the need for artificial lighting, how much were they actually saving?

At the end it was all very interesting and great fun. Thanks to Dave and the guys at Portside for giving us the opportunity!