REPORTING ENCOURAGES MEASUREMENT AND MANAGEMENT King & Wood Mallesons Melbourne tracking towards significant power reductions

Over the past three years, King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) have been managing their environmental footprint and began publicly reporting with AusLSA in 2014.

As a result of their ongoing measurement and management, they were able to compare their major national tenancies’ power consumption and found that the Melbourne office stood out as consuming 40% more than their other comparable sized offices. This has led to a specific initiative in Melbourne to reduce power consumption in that office.

Warren Booth, KWM’s Business Services, Premises and Projects Manager is leading this project and, together with his team, have set an ambitious stretch target to reduce power in the Melbourne office by 30% by June 2015.

“A big advantage in reporting is that is encourages measurement and management” said Warren. He has a whiteboard in his area with the target in big bold letters so that the staff see it every day. “Walking past the whiteboard, seeing the target and see we are tracking seems to have some subliminal effect on us all and we start to adopt more energy conscious attitudes” he said.
Generally, all of KWM’s tenancies have been reducing power over the years, taking advantage of government re-lamping schemes and employing other energy saving measures. This has been a little more difficult in KWM’s Melbourne office, due to the age of the tenancy and the nearing expiration of the lease. “The commercial payback for major lighting projects simply wasn’t there”, said Warren.

Despite this, Warren and his team have been able to make great inroads in other areas which includes fitting “kill switches” on all floors that override sensor lighting, engaging with building security to check lighting after hours and modifying how the conference floor auxiliary air conditioning works.

In addition to this, equipment power settings and gradual equipment replacement also attributes to overall power saving. “Technology devices are all set to go to sleep and PC’s are remotely switched off. New equipment on balance draws about half the load as older equipment”.

After having picked the ‘low-hanging fruit’, Warren and his team are ready to audit remaining equipment with power meters to find the “power hogs”.

So how is the project tracking? So-far Warren is at an impressive 20% of his 30% stretch target. “We had to pick something inspirational to aim for. I followed the example of the Yarra Energy Foundation’s ‘Zero Carbon Project’, where the City of Yarra aims to have a zero carbon future by 2020” said Warren.

While many of KWM’s other offices are already in six-star energy efficient buildings, Warren plans to extend his successes nationally and the lessons he has learned will be passed on.

AusLSA congratulates Warren and his team for their vision and success to date and thanks KWM for allowing us to share this story with our members.

Warren Booth

Business Services, Premises and Projects Manager

King & Wood Mallesons
T: +61 3 9643 5526 
E: warren.booth@au.kwm.com