Project No. 7107
BEC was recently commissioned to provide urgent assistance on a new mixed-use development proposed for beautiful Bargara. We worked in collaboration with Architect Tomas O’Malley and provided energy efficiency and specialist lighting engineering for the development, which consists of two residential towers and two townhouse blocks.
We provided energy efficiency NatHERs modelling and reporting specific to the unique townhouse types and top-floor unit types. The energy efficiency modelling was fairly straightforward, but the project’s specialist lighting requirements were particularly interesting.
The Jewel project is in the vicinity of Mon Repos, which is the largest rookery for loggerhead turtles on the east coast of Australia. The significance of this, and the need to protect the marine turtle nesting grounds called for special care to be taken in the development planning. The potential impact of the development lay in its lighting; so we worked closely with turtle lighting expert, Dr. Kellie Pendoley Principal scientist and Director of Pendoley Environmental and Carl Gray, of Graylight to develop light spill management and mitigation strategies. Together, we produced a specialist lighting design which ensured that the local turtle population remained unaffected by the development, and that was hailed by Kellie Pendoley (who is also Australasian Region Vice Co-Chair of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group) as “setting a new benchmark for turtle aware lighting strategies”.
Our combined efforts were critical in the development achieving Ministerial Approval from the Honourable Cameron Dick MP – Minister for State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Planning – the first in the region to successfully do so.
