Australian Rugby Development Centre, Moore Park, Sydney, NSW

Located in one of Sydney’s biggest sporting precincts at Moore Park, the Australian Rugby Development Centre is the new home to Rugby Australia as well as UTS’ sport and exercise science and physiotherapy programs.

Spanning 6 levels, the facility offers a mix of office space, gymnasiums, indoor playing fields, hydrotherapy pools, indoor and outdoor running tracks and even an environmental room which can be adjusted to temperatures between 4°C and 40°C.

With NDY being engaged for mechanical, electrical, fire protection, hydraulics, specialist lighting and ESD services for the base building works as well as the ARU and UTS fitouts, this was a challenging project from the onset. The facility is wrapped in a distinctive bronze sunshade, which assisted with the building achieving sustainability targets by reducing the amount of solar heat transferred to the building.

This required careful coordination between our sustainability team and the architect to ensure that sustainability targets were being met for the project whilst ensuring that the overall project aesthetics were retained.

The theme of sustainability was present throughout the entire project with solar panels being installed on the roof to help offset the electrical consumption of the UTS floors. The mechanical systems also aimed to reduce electrical consumption by utilising a dedicated mechanical unit to each teaching space/gym to ensure individual temperature control to each space and in turn minimising the amount of overcooling. On the ground floor, NDY designed the retail component of works as well as the services interfaces to the hydrotherapy pools including a dedicated system which cools down the cold plunge pool by rejecting heat to the spa pool.

This unique project is a testament of NDY’s ability to problem solve with a win-win mentality in order to achieve the best project outcomes, and resulted in the client obtaining world class and energy efficient services that will serve them well for years to come.