Paul Jackson gave the audience insightful information on the HVAC&R industry and the history of AIRAH and then Glen Miller and Nicoleta Maynard shared their work and efforts on the unique operations of the engineering pavilion or also known as the “Living Lab”. The “Living Lab” project was a collaboration between Curtin University, AIRAH and IBMS.
The living lab was an idea initially proposed to try to encourage innovative experiential learning and bring together an array of telemetry systems to collect, sort, analyse and deliver live information about the state of the building. This structure which utilises fluid, thermal, vibration and structural sensors throughout the entire building records data in real-time which can be viewed through the website and downloaded for research and teaching purposes.
Steve Bowins who was also involved in the living lab project gave a presentation on the master planning and centralised cooling and heating plant. He spoke about the outcome of master planning and how critical it is to the project which brings together all the objectives of the project.
The presentations given by our panel of speakers were very interesting to the majority of the students present at the event as most were unaware of the HVAC&R industry and about the living lab at Curtin University. The students expressed their interest and were open to opportunities in the HVAC&R sector and would like to explore and research the living lab for their studies in the future.