Everything totally under control

High-rise offices function like isolated habitats that are only connected to the outside environment via central ventilation systems, while also being artificially lit, heated and cooled, and insulated from air pollution. All they need is an energy supply, but this naturally means costs for each tenant as well as costs for the environment. Fortunately, energy usage can be controlled and we are getting much better at doing so. ”For many years, the standard way of controlling such systems as the ventilation was with an hourly work schedule – during the day a set amount of air that had been calculated by relevant experts was supplied to a given floorspace, but during the night, weekends and holidays the installation switched to a reduced setting,” recalls Sylwester Marchewka, the EMEA senior regional technical manager for asset services at Cushman & Wakefield. “The installation settings were largely dependent on certain assumptions, rather than on data gathered