Following your article on the SBEM software, I would like to put forward my comments.

I used the program when it was published in beta format and have used it since it was "complete". I was not at all impressed.

The software takes the easy way round, written as it is around Microsoft Access. This makes the program rather unfriendly for non-computer literate people to use. There are many examples of this: things are described as records rather than walls and there are menu options available that could confuse users, which makes the program slow and frustrating to use.

Is it right that we should be forced to buy Microsoft Access to use the program? This seems to me like an abuse of a near-monopoly position, similar to the government's accusation of Microsoft. Pot calling the kettle black?

There are many examples where it is obvious that the program was written by a programmer without much input from an engineer, making the data entry process much longer than it need be. For instance, you put a wall in a room and then have to select if it connects to the outside or another room - this is unnecessary, as in 99.99% of cases the wall construction would be different for a wall connecting to outside or to another internal room.

This is almost certainly required to comply with Building Regulations. Therefore the rooms would have had to be defined differently in the first place - so it makes sense to define that the wall connects to the outside when the wall is defined, not every time it is used.

It seems to me likely that the SBEM software will not be used very much as soon as other programs are allowed to incorporate the calculation method.

This is because firms will want to calculate heat losses using other software, which requires inputting the geometry of the building. From this point, there is not that much more data entry required to calculate the building benchmark figure.

It is essential, therefore, that the calculation method is published as soon as possible - so that it can be incorporated in to other software that is much easier to use.

Bart Stevens, partner, Max Fordham LLP

Source

Building Sustainable Design