The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House engaged Manteena as the managing contractor to scope, design and manage the replacement of base building and auxiliary HVAC systems, along with the replacement of existing heritage lighting to high-efficiency LED.

Manteena was responsible for managing all aspects of the project including cost, heritage consultancy, electrical and lighting design, mechanical design, HAZMAT assessment and removal, and delivery of all services and building works.

The HVAC works had challenging aspects that Manteena had to work though to overcome as four of the AHUs that were replaced by two larger units bad been located in a 1946-built rooftop plant room. This required two temporary weatherproof canopies to be constructed over the roof and temporary openings made for craneage of the demolition and new equipment.

Another AHU serving the OPH Heritage Art Store, required tightly controlled temporary conditioning which was implemented through innovative reuse of existing
mechanical units.

The Lighting works included a building-wide scoping audit of the emergency lighting system and upgrade to bring all lights and monitoring onto a single Clevertronics network. The central corridor heritage lights were retrofitted with high-efficiency, colour-matched
LEDs, whilst preserving the original 1920s luminaire frames and heritage diffusers. The Kings Hall, House of Representatives and Senate Chamber pendant lights were upgraded with wirelessly controlled colour-changing LEDs.

Many areas in Old Parliament House building have legacy asbestos, lead, PCB and VIR cabling. Manteena implemented a strict scoping, HAZMAT testing, clearance and access permit system to ensure works could proceed on program whilst ensuring all work areas were free from hazardous materials.

All works were undertaken without impacting the day-to-day operations of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.