Roche HQ Welwyn, UK

Roche is one of the world’s leading healthcare companies and the energy-efficient design and intelligent systems installed in their UK Head Office helped the facility to achieve a BREEAM Environmental Performance Index of 10 out of 10 and an 'Excellent' rating. Green issues were thoughtfully integrated from the outset and range from site orientation to the incorporation of one of Europe’s largest ground water cooling systems. The building has a covered street as its focal point: the street connects the open plan work floors and houses a range of facilities including a library, restaurant, café, and health & fitness center. The three storey work areas also have atria and a courtyard, bringing in plenty of natural light from the landscaped surroundings. Natural daylight is an important part of the design and oval-shaped openings in the roof allow light to flood into the day-lit street leaving no individual more than 7.5m from natural light. A Delmatic digital dimming and window blind system controls artificial and natural lighting throughout the site. Presence detectors and multisensors monitor occupation and daylight and the extent of natural lighting enables the Delmatic system to reduce the extent of artificial lighting for large portions of the day with associated savings in energy consumption. The Delmatic system operates using the Lon open protocol and Lon window blind controllers supplied by a third party are connected directly to the lighting management network buswire. Delmatic engineers configured the window blind controllers seamlessly into the lighting management database and the blinds are graphically represented and controlled by the Delmatic head-end software.