Coláiste Choilm Post Primary School, Tullamore, Co Offaly has won both the Green Building Award and the Overall Green Award at the 2012 Green Awards.

The school’s monitoring system will gather over one million points of data per year, which will be used by the The Department of Education and Skills (DoES) and the design team to increase understanding of energy use in modern schools, study passive building techniques, and optimise active and renewable technologies.  The school is the first A2 rated and most airtight school in Ireland.  It has:

• highest air tightness for a bespoke designed school building in Ireland at 1.83m3/m2/hr
• a total annual energy use of only 57kWh/m2/yr while offering notably improved air quality
• a carbon impact reduction of approximately 40% relative to current standards
• an average U-Value 50% below current building standards
• a water consumption 65% lower than a typical school, with 90% of flushed water recovered from rainwater

The design was developed to maximize passive sustainable features in collaboration with Building Design Partnership (BDP Engineers). The narrow plan, orientation, disposition of uses, natural ventilation throughout, high levels of daylight, use of thermal mass and low air permeability contributed to the sustainable design.  Rainwater is harvested and energy systems are monitored through the building management system.
 
Photographed at the award ceremony are (l to r) Shane Cannon, John Sisk & Son Ltd, Larry McEvoy and John Dolan, Department of Education & Skills, Duncan Stewart, RTE, Chris Croly, BDP Consultants, Anne Fletcher, Coady Partnership Architects, Colin Roddy, Coláiste Choilm School Principal, Tomas Sexton, Coady Partnership Architects and Patrick Brennan, John Sisk & Son Ltd.