Commercial and Property – Australia

New South Wales State Library

lrichards — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 15:42:03 +0000

In the first major building project at the Mitchell Building in over 50 years, the New South Wales State Library has undergone a $15m redevelopment to deliver a stunning facility befitting its heritage status.

The scheme comprised a series of upgrades to the Mitchell Building, including new exhibition spaces and a learning centre, involving careful planning to ensure the heritage fabric of the building was respected and protected.

The exhibition spaces were designed by HASSELL architects, with BVN Architecture providing the concept design for the learning centre. The vision was to activate heritage spaces while improving access in and around the library’s historic Mitchell Building and adjoining contemporary Macquarie Street building, facilitating greater engagement with the library’s renowned collection.

Due to the age of the two existing buildings, this presented significant challenges since the life safety services were no longer compliant, making a full re-design of the fire engineering strategy a necessity. The new design, incorporating high-end amenities, was also required to accommodate high occupancies for functions, whilst offering tight humidity control and adherence to strict acoustic requirements.

Our team provided engineering designs to upgrade life safety services and create new exhibition and learning areas. We worked alongside HASSELL architects and BVN Architecture through all stages of the project, from master planning of both the Macquarie and Mitchell Building upgrades, through to design and construction.

Poly Centre at 210 George Street

lrichards — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 15:35:05 +0000

This award-winning mixed-use development with stunning views across Sydney offers best-in-class office space, along with multiple retail units at street level and modern residential space on the upper floor.

The Grimshaw Architects-designed scheme incorporates double floor villages through the entire building, allowing for vertical tenancies and increased connectivity. Taking a prominent position on the Sydney sky scape, Poly Australian’s PCA “A” grade development offers tenants high-end commercial space with many premium elements available across its boutique sized floor plates.

The building’s striking design incorporates accentuated concrete arches on the façade, whilst the 14-metre high, glazed entry lobby and curved glass top floor ceilings maximise the expansive views and boost tenant experience of this incredible facility.

Designed to maximise daylight, mezzanines were created throughout the build for residents to enjoy and on the western exterior façade the vertical blades have the flexibility to shift in orientation to enable transparency to the street whilst shading occupants at different times of day.

Waterman’s team worked closely with Poly Australian and Grimshaw Architects to develop the electrical and mechanical base building services design for the scheme, embracing the shared sustainability goals and helping to achieve both a five-star NABERS Energy rating and a five-star Greenstar rating. Our team was also engaged to continue the mechanical detailed design for the Mechanical sub-contractor.

This beautiful building won the Sir Arthur G Stephenson Award for Commercial Architecture, Australian Institute of Architects Awards (NSW Chapter) in 2023.

15 William Street, Melbourne, Victoria

admin — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:43:27 +0000

Waterman undertook the engineering services design for this state-of-the-art Premium Grade office building. The engineering services were designed to comply with the Guidelines of the Property Council of Australia.

The engineering services brief was to design a flexible and high-quality environment in which companies can maximise the advantage and extract the efficiencies that come from having access to the best of current and future technology.

The design was based on the incorporation of ESD principles, which include double glazing, DDC energy management and high efficient computer-controlled lighting technology.

11 Exhibition Street, Melbourne

admin — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:42:12 +0000

The project involved the construction of a new 19-storey office tower with approximately 20,000 square metres of NLA. The design was based on a Property Council “A Grade” office quality and included above and below ground parking for 350 cars and a mix of retail and food tenancy areas.

Waterman provided full design, documentation and construction phase services for Mechanical, Electrical, Fire, Hydraulic, and Vertical Transport services.