A Unique Chiller Install For The One&Only Hayman Island

Client:

One&Only Hayman Island

Project:

Temporary Chillers

The Background:

In 2014, One&Only Hayman Island luxury resort reopened after a much-publicised $80m refurbishment and rebranding.

Since then guests and luxury travel guides alike have heaped One&Only Hayman Island with continuous praise.

“This magnificent resort is the grande dame of the Whitsundays, attracting worldly, high-flying guests seeking precious downtime. Five-star services and facilities, landscaped grounds, and exquisite objects d’art set in a quietly elegant tone in the lobby, restaurants, walkways, and public areas.”

One&Only Hayman Island owes much of its exceptional reputation to its core values. One of which is to “develop passionate and committed employees” or colleagues as the One&Only Hayman Island team is referred as.

While other companies may pay lip service to their core values, One&Only Hayman Island team walks the talk. They have a real commitment to being thoughtful towards their colleagues. As such, as part of the refurbishment, even the HVAC system in the “Heart of House” or Colleague Village Restaurant and Administration Offices were included in the refurbishment plans.

Greg Meares, Director of Engineering & Special Projects at One&Only Hayman Island explains the situation; “To develop passionate and committed employees we need to ensure we have a comfortable environment for them to rest and enjoy their meals so they can continuously strive for perfection when serving our guests. In other companies the ‘back of house’ HVAC system is often forgotten as it’s out of sight, out of mind but for us it is critical. With this in mind there was never any thought to complete the permanent system upgrade without providing temporary air conditioning for our colleagues. So we asked around and came across Active Air Rentals. We gave them a call and a week later they came to do a site visit.”

The Solution:

Chillers

Greg met with Shane Hardey, Director, Active Air Rentals. “They had intended on swapping like-for-like.” Explains Shane. “But after looking at their actual capacity requirements and site layout we recommended a 750kW and 400kW chiller. These units would easily meet requirements but also be more cost effective.”

Logistics

Getting to One&Only Hayman Island is rightly exclusive and a little tricky at the best of times but when logistics include a couple of semi-trucks’ worth of equipment, it makes it even harder.

“There was a lot of logistics to work through, but the One&Only Hayman Island team were great.” Says Dominic Cook, Head Electrician, Active Air Rental
s. “Once our gear arrived it was transferred to smaller trucks and then barged over to the island. We had to work-in with other suppliers to optimise the barge space and timetable, but it all went smoothly.”

A Temporary Install Done Permanently

As the chillers would be in use for more than a month the install was done a little differently.

“We had a relatively short time frame in which to get the units commissioned.” Explains Dominic. “And because the install is going to be a ‘long-term’ temporary job we did it more like a permanent install. After craning our units into place we disconnected the old chillers and joined our chillers into their system. We used a large number of metal cable trays for the support cables and chiller pipes. This improves the efficiency of the equipment by protecting the cables and pipes from the extreme heat. It also looks great. We also used square trays to reduce fly-away risks that could be posed by cyclones.”

Active Air cooperated and worked well with the team onsite from Hayman, both committed to commission the ‘long-term’ temporary chillers on time. And even with a power breaker blowing out on commissioning day, we were able to do just that.

The Results

The commissioning was completed on time ensuring the One&Only Hayman Island colleagues were perfectly cooled, leaving them refreshed and ready to provide the exceptional service they are renowned for.