If you want to know more about the IFAD building - Get on the roof!

By Clare Bishop-Sambrook, PTA

This week many staff have taken advantage of the opportunity to visit the IFAD roof and learn more about IFAD’s greening efforts first hand. Twelve solar panels (hot water system), four gas fired boilers (723 kW each), five chillers and 13 air handling units make up the heating, ventilation and air conditioning in IFAD’s HQ.

The visit in numbers….

Number	Unit	Comment
Zero	Tolerance	In the summer do not open windows because unfiltered, moist air enters the building and can block the chilled beam (air conditioning) unit in the offices
1	Building	IFAD is the only building in Italy to have achieved the gold level of the Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) voluntary green building certification for Existing Buildings – Operations and Maintenance (EB:OM). No UN or IFI building has yet to achieve this certification at the Platinum level
2	Visual inspections per day	Two visits per day by the maintenance technicians to ensure all critical elements of the mechanical and electrical installations are working properly
4	Years	Payback period on the solar panels which were co-financed with Gemmo (maintenance contractor)
11	LEED points	If IFAD maintains the points from the original certification in 2010, IFAD needs 11 points to move from gold to platinum level on LEED
15	Days	The frequency with which the air filters are cleaned; recommended practice is 4 – 6 weeks
20	°C	Base temperature for building in winter
26	°C	Base temperature for building in summer
28	Sq metres	Solar panels
47	Staff	Signed up for the visit to IFAD’s solar panels this week
50	Per cent	Women in the IFAD Facilities Team
92	Per cent	Share of air travel (by staff) of IFAD’s total greenhouse gas emissions
100	Per cent	All occupied areas of the building are air conditioned and have light quality of a minimum of 350 Lux
100	Per cent	All hot water requirements during the summer months should be met from the solar panels
202	Energy Utilization Index (EUI)	IFAD obtained an EUI of 202 kWh/m2/year – some 40 per cent better than best practice for a building such as IFAD HQ in this climatic region
240	Staff	Completed the ADM survey (at least 300 are required in order to potentially gain an extra point in the LEED evaluation)
1,000	Sq metres	Area of lawn and flowerbeds requiring watering in the summer
3,200	Litres	Water tanks on the roof  heated by solar panels with additional tanks in the basement to store a further 9500 litres of hot water
20,000	Litres	Water tanks in basement for harvesting water from the rooftop
60,000	Litres	Average volume of water used per day in IFAD

Thanks to the rooftop tour guides: Dave Nolan and Antonio Russo