The ‘Dan Carter’ of building services joins Babbage

Media release

9 December 2014

The ‘Dan Carter’ of building services joins Babbage Christchurch office

Less than a year after opening its new Christchurch office, Babbage has expanded its operation further with the appointment of senior mechanical engineer Alan Cooke to the office.

Alan has worked in Canterbury and Otago for 33 years both as engineer and consultant and has a strong history in the healthcare sector where he has worked on a range of specialist healthcare service and aged care facilities, as well as retail, education and commercial properties.

Alan has been described by one happy customer as “the Dan Carter of building services” because of his work on the iconic Riverstone Castle project.

His credentials round out the expertise of the Babbage building services team, and their strong focus on healthcare. Senior engineers Matthew Foskin and Tommy Lee also have a particular focus on specialist medical facilities such as MRI scanner suites and high-energy radiation treatment facilities, and worked on the Southland Hospital build. Craig Cooper, Principal of Babbage Building Services division, and senior engineer Aslam Javed have international expertise in this area, having worked on hospital builds in Canada and Australia.

Alan says that aged-care facilities and medical speciality suites, which have their own unique requirements, such as Linac Bunkers that house the Linear Accelerator used for radiation treatment.

“Typically they need metre-thick concrete walls and you have to pay attention to things like pipework – there shouldn’t be too many straight lines. You build in as many steps as possible so radiation is absorbed rather than allowed to pass through to other parts of the facility.

“CT scanner suites, MRI suites, endoscopy units, operating theatres, isolation rooms, all have certain characteristics that mean the buildings they go in to have to be carefully designed,” says Alan.

Before joining Babbage, Alan spent seven years running his own consulting service and prior to that was managing director at Atmos Engineering, growing the company from start-up to employing more than 50 staff.

Babbage Building Services is currently undertaking work on a retirement village in Wanaka, and is looking to broaden its offer to clients nationally. Aged-care facilities are a strong area of growth for Babbage but also for the construction industry in general.

“This is a fast growing area of the market as the population ages, and with the increased demand for aged-care facilities comes a growing awareness of the issues faced by an ageing population. We have

to carefully consider all aspects of our design work, from obvious issues like mobility access to the more recent demands, like good internet connectivity,” says Alan.

“We operate a multi-disciplinary business, with structural, civil, geotechnical, environmental, mechanical and building-services engineers, together with electrical and hydraulic services, architects, building surveyors, land surveyors, planners and project managers. We are delighted to have Alan’s expertise on board and his presence and knowledge of working in Christchurch and across the South Island,” Craig Cooper says. “Having someone with Alan’s skillset on board means not only can he support us with work in the Auckland area, but the Auckland office can support him and the team in their work in Canterbury.”

The Riverstone Castle project was one of the more unusual requests of his career, Alan says.

“How do you efficiently heat a castle made of 20,000 concrete blocks laid on 540cu metres of concrete?” says Alan.

If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the castle in question sits in the middle of an artificial lake on a dairy farm outside Oamaru. However the lake proved to be the jewel in the crown. It acts as the heat store from which, by use of a geothermal heat pump, we can extract heat efficiently enough to inexpensively heat the castle using under floor heating and a few radiators.

“Geothermal heat is usually expensive to install due to cost of excavation but when that’s already done you just need to take advantage of it.”

Alan will be growing the building-services practice from the Christchurch office.

ENDS

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