This approach enables significant savings in construction materials, installation costs, fit out and reconfiguration costs and, in new build construction, can free up additional lettable space or reduce overall building height.

The Centre in Hong Kong installed the AET Flexible Space solution and was able to fit in an additional floor for every ten floors constructed due to the height savings created by this concept. The Centre was the world’s tenth tallest skyscraper at the time of construction, and currently the fifth tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong.

A floor void of only 250-300mm is installed to utilise the AET Flexible Space solution. This space accommodates the cabling and fan terminals and, when compared to a typical ceiling void, allows an increased headroom of 200-400mm.

AET’s under floor air conditioning (UFAC) solution also offers benefits to older buildings which either have limited headroom, smaller floor plates or don’t want to disturb the existing ceiling. Using traditional ceiling-based air conditioning systems engineers would find it a challenge to maintain the 2.5m headroom required to promote commercial space as Grade A. A number of older buildings in the UK have worked with AET to preserve this status.

In addition to the height saving benefits the AET UfAC system also minimises waste and energy consumption and the modular and flexible equipment is easy to operate, clean, maintain and re-use.

The flexibility of the AET solution means that building can be future proofed as opposed to tradition air conditioning solutions which are fixed and, therefore, cannot be altered.