CIBSE conference

CIBSE President Graham Manly laid down the challenge to CIBSE members to turn the delivery of sustainable construction into a reality. In his opening address to the 2004 conference, Manly said it was “time for the construction industry to show true leadership through its ability to create a more sustainable built environment.” He stressed that building services engineers have a major role to play in an integrated design team to make sure the buildings created, refurbished and maintained will bring benefits to both clients and the public at large.

Conference sessions covered the key drivers behind the need for more sustainable construction; the current threat from global warming; how legislation would be implemented; how clients need to change their perspectives and example projects that have already successfully delivered sustainable buildings.

Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific advisor demonstrated how severe the problem of global warming is and how much worse it could get if carbon emissions are not reduced radically. King said that the world is already experiencing global warming and we can expect more changes to our climate over the coming years. He stressed that industry across the board must adapt to climate change and that the built environment in particular must be effectively and efficiently managed in terms of their energy use and CO2 emissions.

Steve Irving, director of building research at Faber Maunsell articulated the challenges involved in establishing a method of calculating energy performance in buildings and said any measurement method needed to be flexible enough to apply to different building types while also being technically robust and easily checkable against the required standards.

Andrew Warren, director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy said that the requirement of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive for energy rating certificates to be made available to buyers and tenants will place more pressure on builders to make sure their products are of a high standard. He also said that the move to enforce the prominent display in all public buildings of their energy ratings will create a “sea change” in the industry. For the first time, it will become clear who is acting responsibly and who isn’t.

As well as the push that these market forces will give the industry, Warren stated that the legislation will force builders to buy and use energy efficient products in all new buildings and major renovation works. Warren claimed that the EPBD will, if implemented properly, save 45 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, which amounts to 21% of the EU’s Kyoto target for 2010. Warren said that five times that amount could be saved through further legislation that demanded for currently available technologies to be put into Europe’s existing buildings.

Martin Goss, technical director at Mtech Group, said that the client must communicate its requirements early on to the design team. Goss said that the design team would then be able to translate these issues into solid methods and clear performance targets could be established. Goss added that a sustainability strategy shouldn’t just be a set of ideals, but a tangible document that could be used to overcome resistance to certain elements of the construction process. Such a document would also provide important information to the design team and would include clear, measurable targets. It would also allocate responsibilities for these targets to certain members of the project team and could be integrated into the construction strategy.

Influencing clients

The conference also addressed the need for the industry to influence clients and demonstrate to them that a sustainable building will bring benefits to their business. Andrew Ford of Fulcrum Consulting said: “Clients should be able to come to our industry and come out the other end with something that is going to improve their business.” Ford said the construction industry needs to deliver higher quality buildings that clients would be willing to pay more money for, and that that money could be used to invest in further improvement of the industry. Factors such as legislation and the influence of the market place are all things that the industry needs to respond to in order to deliver buildings that the client wants. “We’ve got to shift this perception from being an industry that just delivers artefacts and objects towards being an industry that delivers on long-term investment,” he said.

The relationship between architects and services engineers was also highlighted as essential to getting clients to understand sustainable issues. “We (building services engineers) are the only people in the construction process who know how to deliver comfort. The only other people involved who can have a similar influence are architects. We can learn from them how to deliver delight in our buildings. We need to concentrate not so much on the delivery of equipment and systems, but on understanding what delivers delight and tying it in very strongly with comfort and showing our clients that if those two things go together they get improved buildings.”

David Turrent from ECD Architects talked about how sustainability pays from an architect’s viewpoint, and how these benefits can be conveyed to the client. “The key factors for architects in designing buildings are resource efficiency, quality and added value, flexibility and longevity.” Turrent said the sustainability triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic aspects is where the industry needs to look for real evidence of how sustainability can deliver. “This is where whole life costing and post occupancy feedback begins to provide us with this information. The benchmarking tools such as BREEAM will also help us to think holistically and design in a way that everyone can engage with.” While the triple bottom line can be used to show clients where the benefits of having a sustainable building lie, Turrent said that much of this evidence has not yet been made available to them. “There needs to be a lot more published information so that clients can appreciate what can be done.”

Post occupancy evaluation

The value of post occupancy evaluation was also highlighted by other speakers at this year’s conference. Dr Mark Gorgolewski, associate professor at the department of architectural science at Ryerson University, Toronto covered the concept of a fit building – fit for the people that use it, fit for its purpose, and fit for the planet. Gorgolewski argues that universities do not provide the feedback loops necessary for students in building related professions to develop a balanced appreciation of the quality of their designs and that alternative feedback loops are necessary. “Without these every building becomes to a large extent a prototype and the knowledge that could be learnt from each building is lost.” Gorgolewski embraces the principal that you learn by doing, and believes the answer lies in getting students involved in assessing both the technical and social aspects of existing buildings. Such experiences will help students to develop a better understanding of whether a building meets the aspirations of the client and how well it responds to user needs.

We need to understand what delivers delight, tie it in with comfort and show our clients that those two things together deliver improved buildings.

The Agents of Change program in North America is one such example leading the way. The program trains architecture faculty and teaching assistants in building performance evaluation methods as well as expanding the knowledge base of case studies, which can then be integrated into the course curriculum. Along similar lines, The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Trust runs a competition for students to carry out a technical appraisal of an existing building and its performance, hopefully leading to better understanding of how buildings are used and the sustainability issues that arise. Finally Gorgolewski says it needs to be accepted that buildings evolve over their life, the so called “blue jeans buildings” – that age honestly and elegantly with time.

Adrian Leaman, managing director of Building Use Studies gave an update into life after PROBE. Although the PROBE studies, published in BSj between 1995 and 2002, have come to an end The Usable Buildings Trust has been set up dedicated to achieving buildings with better all-round performance through the routine use of feedback at all stages of a building’s life cycle. Although organisations are coming to realise how important feedback is when it comes to getting better value from their buildings, closing the feedback loop has been difficult – everyone benefits, nobody wants to pay. The Usable Buildings Trust charity aims to promote feedback techniques and results for the general good. Visit www.usablebuildings.co.uk to find out more.

Improving building performance through metering was a subject picked up by Phil Jones of Building Energy Solutions. Jones concentrated on the requirements for sub-metering and the possible developments in the upcoming changes to Part L.

The old adage that if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it is particularly apt in the world of buildings and with so many going unmeasured it could be said that they are badly managed in terms of energy, comfort and flexibility. Jones says it’s really about getting under the skin of the building to find where the energy is going, where the problems lie and what you’re able to do about it.

“We’re heading towards two key things, a metering strategy and a metering schedule which together show where the meters are, what they are measuring and what they are expected to measure. This will then get passed into the building log-book so the building owner can put them into practice.”

Currently in the process of being updated is General Information Leaflet 65: A guide to help designers meet Part L2 of the Building Regulations. The updated Guide will include new sections on existing buildings and automatic monitoring and targeting as well as the current methodology to help designers develop a sensible and cost-effective metering strategy.

While metering in itself doesn’t save money the actions taken as a result of monitoring enable energy savings to be achieved and Jones says it is reasonable to expect savings of 5-10% where staff are vigilant – and in many cases this can be much more.

The 2004 proposals for Part L are more strategic, asking for reasonable provision to enable at least 90% of the estimated annual energy consumption for each fuel to be accounted for while leaving much of the detail to GIL 65. “The only thing it adds is that new and refurbished buildings over 1000 m2 should include automatic meter reading and collection facilities that analyse and report the data and let the building operator take action.” There is no mention of draft ADL2B – work in existing buildings other than dwellings.

Jones believes that sub-metering will play a significant part in helping with the EU directive on the energy performance of buildings – not just with building labelling but with boiler inspection and air conditioning inspection. “I think metering is much undervalued but will play a stronger and stronger role in all our buildings.”