Sustainability: a more measured approach

Renewable technologies will play an increasingly important role in the delivery of sustainable building services and are generating great excitement. However, there is a whole range of more basic measures contractors should be considering first to make sure that renewables can realise their full potential.

We need to be challenging ourselves and our clients about fundamental good housekeeping. Do we even know how much energy a particular building is consuming? Were the systems ever commissioned? What is the controls strategy and is there a maintenance plan that includes energy monitoring?

An energy audit programme in a number of schools earlier this year illustrated the point perfectly. It revealed a catalogue of energy mismanagement. One particularly startling example was a school building that generated a base load demand of 45 kW on Easter Sunday.

This kind of thing is being replicated all over the country. Services are working away when there is no-one in the building because staff have never been trained to set the controls or even turn things off.

Contractors have much more to do than just applying technology. We need to ensure operators have some training and understanding of how systems work and are controlled. And they need to measure their consumption as a basic first step.

According to the Carbon Trust, British firms literally threw away £570 million last summer – or the equivalent of 15% of their total energy spend. On average, commercial buildings in the UK are consuming 35% more energy than they were designed to, often because the building services were never properly commissioned.

Industrial consumption of energy has fallen dramatically since the 1970s because our manufacturing base has shrunk, but the services sector has galloped off in the other direction and now consumes 80% more gas and electricity than it did in 1980. This is where the building services industry can make a huge difference by applying best practice, energy-efficient design and refurbishment.

Commissioning is right at the heart of the new Building Regulations, and there is also a strong argument for annual building MOTs, with continuous commissioning to ensure buildings continue to operate as intended.

Facilities managers must also be involved from the outset. They must be trained and encouraged to schedule in periodic recommissioning as part of their standard maintenance plans.

After all, electrical systems are now subject to a five-yearly mandatory safety check, so why not have a similar regime in place to ensure building services systems are operating as designed?

Contractors need to ensure operators have some training in how systems are controlled. They need to measure their consumption as a first step

The forthcoming mandatory inspection of air-conditioning systems is a step in the right direction, but these measures must be enforced or they will be meaningless.

The government shows a worrying lack of enthusiasm in this area. It believes that local authority building control officers can enforce Part L of the Building Regulations, when experience shows they have little interest in anything beyond structural and fire risk issues.

Local trading standards officers are to be charged with the task of enforcing building energy performance certificates, despite their total lack of expertise in this area.

A more likely scenario is that lawyers will enforce energy improvements by cutting the price offered by their clients during the buying or rental process, if the building is below the energy-efficiency levels dictated by Part L. So more work for lawyers.

They will find plenty of ammunition, once the process of energy inspections is in full swing. Energy auditors continually find buildings, including new ones, woefully out of balance, thanks to poorly or never commissioned services.

Under the terms of Part L, building logbooks are now mandatory, but our experience is that very few are actually being prepared and delivered to the building operator. Why are these measures not being enforced? Could it be because there is no-one to enforce them?

The government’s lack of meaningful support for competent persons schemes also means we are seeing a steady influx of unregistered and unqualified people into the industry who are looking to make a quick buck in renewables, particularly solar domestic hot water.

It is so important that the specialist trades and designers take control of this market, because emerging solutions like solar, ground and air-source heat pumps and wind power will only deliver energy savings and reduced carbon emissions if they are properly integrated with existing services.

And, where necessary, those existing services need to be recommissioned by someone who knows what they are doing.

A key issue is ensuring everything is done to reduce the base energy load of every building, before renewables are even considered.