Celebrating our Colleagues: Vikram Kenjle

VK Portrait

Vikram Kenjle, Manager - Asset, Planning & Energy. 

A man in his garage with his sleeves rolled up getting grease on his hands at the weekend, tuning up high performance cars, is probably not the first image you might have of a sustainability expert. 

Yet buildings – and they are Vikram Kenjle’s day job – are, after all, at many levels nothing more than big machines built to service the humans who inhabit them. 

How well they do that, and how well they meet environmental standards, requires a lot of regular tuning up. Especially when you have three campuses full of them, some dating back almost 150 years – even more so when your University is about to get a whole lot bigger. 

“I’ve always loved cars,” Vikram – our University’s Manager – Asset, Planning & Energy – says. “This is why, as an engineer, I did my honours and dissertation back home with Mercedes-Benz India and really wanted to pursue that career. 

“But I also recognised I didn’t necessarily want to sit and design engines. It was more I loved driving and there was not a career to be had there. I do sometimes get called a hypocrite for being passionate about the environment but also loving big engine cars. I love working with them, coding them, tuning them, that’s what keeps me active in my spare time.” 

Vikram almost sheepishly admits he now drives a hybrid. However, he says, if he had a bigger garage... 

Of course, most of the buildings in our University are also hybrids. 

One of his favourites definitely fits that description – the recently revamped 1970s architectural gem, Union House. “People don’t realise that, yes, a lot of work went into aesthetics but, behind the scenes, more than half of the money went into upgrading the services, while also dealing with the heritage requirements.  

“It was a very big challenge, but it was a really good building to deal with because it’s just been built so well. It, and the Mitchell Building, both have great thermal mass. They’ve got good design and passive cooling and other properties which help with sustainability. Far superior to the glass boxes mostly being built which are really expensive to run.” 

One far newer “glass box” Vikram definitely approves of is his number one favourite University building – Ingkarni Wardli on our North Terrace campus.

VK in garden

“It was intended to be a six-star green building to begin with, one of Australia’s first educational six-star buildings,” Vikram explains. “When I came in, the challenge was it was not operating at six stars, because of numerous constraints and the way the whole building had been repurposed. Our buildings have to be flexible and need to adapt.  

“As a leading research-intensive University, our buildings don’t remain static. Their functions change. That is what happened with Ingkarni and now we are trying to get it back to what it was supposed to be.” 

Current work, in the final stages of commissioning, aims to digitise the existing natural gas-powered tri-generator system with a bespoke rectifier inverter. This will be supplemented by a custom-built lithium-ion battery to create a single building nano-grid which aims to demonstrate smart electricity demand management and improved energy resilience.  

“That’s our statement engineering building, and we’ll get to demonstrate real leading-edge nano-grid technology which also will be used as a teaching tool.” 

It is this kind of work which has helped propel the University to be a net-zero organisation, an achievement just recently announced. 

Another major step along that path happened at our Roseworthy campus with its solar farm. 

“At Roseworthy we retrofitted a100 year old campus to create a campus-scale microgrid. Nearly 50% of that campus is now self-reliant on self-generated clean power. That was one of the key highlights of our sustainability strategy. 

I’ve worked in various different sectors in the past, but with the University we have some of the best minds working in our buildings, and if you tap into them, you can get really creative solutions or ideas.

Vikram has been with the University of Adelaide for nine years, and from next year will be Associate Director, Estate Planning & Sustainability for Adelaide University. He first moved to Adelaide to take a leading role in the Adelaide Solar City program set up under the Rudd Government in 2007 to promote solar energy adoption and energy efficiency.  

That was followed by work with the Australian Industry Group, heading their Environmental Division, supported by the Rudd Government’s billion-dollar diversification fund to assist Australian industry transform. 

“I think that’s how I brought some of my experience to lead and deliver some marquee sort of iconic projects here at the University with Roseworthy as one of them,” Vikram says. Also, we achieved 15% energy intensity reduction as part of our previous sustainability plan and its commitment.  

“I think that’s what we’re trying to balance and showcase. A pathway which is still leading edge, still showing leadership to the whole community, but at the same time is cost effective.” 

Written by Mark Douglas, Communications Coordinator.

Photos by Jackie Tracy, Communications Coordinator.

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