The Services Generation

Mechanical plant has shorter lives than structure. Chillers, cooling towers, boilers and air-handling units installed when these buildings opened have often been replaced once and may be approaching a second replacement. Pumps, fans and terminal units follow their own cycles. The question for an owner is rarely whether the plant works today. It is when the next major replacement falls and whether it should be like for like.

Refrigerants add a regulatory layer. Older refrigerants were phased out under international agreements, and newer ones face their own phase-down schedules. Plant that runs on a refrigerant that is becoming scarce becomes more expensive to maintain and may be replaced earlier than its physical condition alone would suggest.

Plant from this generation often runs on refrigerants that are being phased out, and the phase-out dates now drive replacement as much as wear does.

For an owner the effect is practical. A chiller on R22 can still run, but every leak repair draws on a shrinking and dearer supply, and a major failure may make replacement the only economic choice. A chiller on R410A has longer, but its refrigerant is on the same path. Recording the refrigerant against each item of plant, as the plant room reading in this paper suggests, turns a regulatory schedule into a capital one.

The first and second generations of building management systems were proprietary, and many controllers installed in the 1990s and 2000s are no longer supported. Spare parts are scarce, integration with newer plant is difficult, and the system often cannot support the analytics described in What AI Takes Out of the Building.

In this generation, the controls often date the building more than the chillers do.

Curtain walls and glazed facades from this era depend on sealants, gaskets and structural glazing compounds that age with sun and movement. A facade can look fine from the street while seals fail, letting water and air in and allowing condensation behind the glass. Facade maintenance programmes, reseal works and, eventually, glazing upgrades are recurring items.

Some buildings of this period, and later, used cladding materials that are now the subject of remediation programmes in Australia and Britain and of tighter code requirements in the United States. Identifying cladding type is part of reading any building from the 1990s onward.

The quickest way to read a building of this generation is to walk its plant rooms with a list. For each major item: year installed, refrigerant, hours run, maintenance record, parts availability, and whether the controls that run it are supported. Chillers and cooling towers first, then boilers or heat pumps, air-handling units, pumps and the main switchboard. Then the building management system: who made it, what version, whether the vendor still supports it and whether it can be integrated.

The register that results is usually services-heavy in the two-to-five-year horizon, with the envelope reseal and lift modernisation close behind. The structure rarely appears except where car park concrete or balcony elements are exposed.

Many of these buildings heat with gas boilers and cool with electric chillers. Electrifying heating means replacing boilers with heat pumps that produce lower-temperature water and draw more electrical load, which pushes the question back to the switchboard and supply. For larger let buildings in England and Wales, the expected EPC B standard from 2031 makes this a sequenced programme rather than a choice, and in American cities with performance standards the same works are a compliance path. In Australia the driver is more often NABERS performance, tenant expectation and gas pricing than regulation.

The practical reading is that the plant replacement already due in this generation is also the moment to decide the building’s energy future. Replacing like for like can lock in a second gas cycle. Replacing with electrified plant brings the switchboard and distribution forward. Either way, the decision deserves to be made explicitly.

Lift controllers, drives and door equipment from this period are commonly due for modernisation. Electrical switchboards installed with the building are now old enough that spare capacity, safety features and parts availability matter, especially if the owner wants to electrify heating or add charging. As Energy Becomes a Building Function argues, the main switchboard often gates later decisions.

A services-led plan suits this generation: map the plant, its age, its refrigerant, its controls and its dependencies, then sequence replacements so that each one prepares the building for the next.