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27 Jan 2015

Sustainable Building and Maintenance

At Film City Glasgow we aim to continually improve sustainability within the workplace and this affects the decisions we make in all of our building and maintenance work.

While the character of old buildings like the Govan Town Hall make them appealing places to work, it is inevitable that they will at times feel colder and more drafty than a new-build would.  Being a grade B listed building, we are obviously limited in what we can and can't do to combat these problems, however, we've made a number of changes in recent years which our tenants will hopefully be feeling the benefits of. 

During the summer of 2013 we installed fibreglass insualtion in our Phase 3 loft area, and in 2014 this project was extended to cover the loft above our First Floor Production Office.  In both cases we spent a great deal of time researching how we could achieve the highest insulation values, while taking into consideration the practicalities of the installation.  We have done a great deal of draft-proofing around the building and also fitted radiator foils to all of our Phase 3 radiators on external walls.  These changes will hopefully ensure that the building feels less drafty, and that the heat we produce isn't lost through uninsulated walls and loft areas.  

Over the past few years, we have refurbished several areas of the building in order to create more useable office space.  The aim of sustainability has influenced our choice of building materials, our selection of low energy heaters and lighting, and the way in which we dispose of building waste.  All of our new office suites have 100mm Kingspan insulation built into the frames of external walls, which again, means that the heat produced in the room stays in the room.  Where possible, we also aim to reuse old fixtures and fittings from around the building in our refurbishments.  To make the most of the space in such a busy building it has been necessary to modernise certain areas, however, our aim is to retain as many of the building's original features as possible when making these changes. The new Red Room entrance at Summertown Road Foyer makes use of a 1970s door and mouldings, which match the existing panelling.

In line with our Sustainable Procurement Policy we aim, where possible, to buy items such as lightbulbs in bulk and always to choose suitable, low energy, options.  It may sound obvious, but an old-style 60watt bulb uses over five times as much energy than its direct equivalent – an 11 watt energy saver.  To give a sense of scale, in our Main Hall East Corridor alone there are almost thirty light fixtures where this change has been applied.  When you consider the number of light fixtures across a building of this size, it is apparent that relatively small changes, such as switching to low energy bulbs, can have a dramatic impact on our overall energy consumption 

These are just some of the areas we've been focusing our attention on recently.  We are always looking for ideas on how to improve our sustainable building and maintenance projects, so if you have any suggestions we'd be glad to hear them.         

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