The four-and-half-acre development, being built by Morgan Sindall Construction, includes two new hotels, commercial offices and a new public realm area – Great Central Square – in Leicester’s city centre.

No.1 Great Central Square comprises 35,000 square feet of open-plan office space over five floors, air conditioned by a high performance, heat-pump-based Toshiba SMMS-e system, installed by Ambivent.

Ten Toshiba outdoor units supply cooling and heating via 40 indoor cassettes installed across the building, with a heat recovery ventilation system in each wing further boosting efficiency and reducing end user running costs. A 12kW Toshiba split system running on R32 refrigerant installed in the reception area completes the total building system. High level control and monitoring is provided by a Black Pear system.

Joshua Medhurst, who carried out the mechanical services design under the supervision of Ambivent’s design manager Steve Thornton, said: “The project was originally specified with ducted equipment from another manufacturer, however this was outside the budget.

“We proposed an alternative system using Toshiba’s SMMS-e two-pipe VRF with cassettes, as it met the requirements for high quality, reliability and delivery of both heating and cooling with excellent energy efficiency. It won the day.

“We received outstanding support from Toshiba sales manager James Selfridge throughout the detailed design and after-sales stages.”

Toshiba’s SMMSe system delivers energy efficiency, with European Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating (ESEER) values of over seven for all units in the range. It also offers resilience, with two inverter-controlled Toshiba twin-rotary compressors in each outdoor unit, providing back-up in the unlikely event of a failure.

For the contractor, the system is equipped with a wireless wave-tool, which simplifies commissioning, servicing and system monitoring with Android smartphones.