Get Sust! Issue 29

The future's bright, the future's... in building services

The ultra-traditional surroundings of the Hotel Russell in London’s Bloomsbury literary quarter is not the place you would expect to encounter a vision of the “brave new world”. But there among the flock wallpaper and ineffectual air-conditioning(!), visitors to the CIBSE Annual Conference 2007 at the end of April got a taste of things to come.

The scene was set on the first day by Faber Maunsell’s Steve Irving and Ted King of the government Department for Communities and Local Government, who presented a review of the current state of play for building energy certification. And there was further information about regulatory issues on day two from Paul de Cort (also of DCLG), who focused on the new inspection regimes for air-conditioning systems. Add to that a panel discussion during which Liz Pearce of the British Property Federation expressed her organisation’s desire for a methodology to separately calculate the landlord’s and tenant’s carbon emissions for commercial buildings, and we have a pretty clear picture of the world we are facing:

more regulation, more inspections and ever more focus on sustainability.

Jobs for the boys (and girls)

Business people tend to recoil in horror at the idea of greater regulation, but the truth is, it’s good for the environment, and it’s great news for construction professionals - because it is opening up a whole new world of career opportunities.

For example, Gordon Evans, senior associate at PCKO Architects, thinks that the only way to reduce construction inefficiencies - and therefore boost business profit as well as greening the process - is to engage with flexible design teams where a lead engineer would be a single point of contact for the whole project. His “new architectural vision of engineers” includes moving much of the construction process off site and concentrating on an holistic approach where specialists work alongside each other.

Meanwhile CIBSE is ahead of the game, having seen the increasing focus on professional “competence” and launched its Low Carbon Consultants (LCC) register - which will help clients to identify the specialists this brave new world requires.

The LCC was launched back in September 2006 and initially concentrated on training and registering individuals with a proven competence in building design, and building management. Announcing a new branch of the scheme - for simulation experts - at the April Conference, CIBSE Chief Executive Stephen Matthews said that in the eight months since launch more than 500 applicants have passed through the training, and 370 have met the necessary requirements to be placed on the register. A further 300 will be trained during 2007.

For the LCC (Simulation), professionals will be trained and assessed by three software providers:

EDSL (TAS)
IES (VE)
Hevacomp.

CIBSE is now working with DCLG, and hopes that the LCC will be written into the legislation with effect from October 2007. This will allow Building Control Officers to accept carbon emissions calculations signed off by a Low Carbon Consultant without the need for further checking or evaluation. In addition, CIBSE plans that its LCC will become an accredited scheme for Energy Assessors who provide Energy Performance Certificates and air-conditioning inspections.

But that’s not all. Even if you don’t join the LCC, you need to get up to speed with sustainability. For as CIBSE’s new Introduction to Sustainability says: “Building services engineers now have the opportunity to expand their role to include sustainability advice at the early stages of projects and in the operation and maintenance of buildings”.

CIBSE’s 24-page booklet lays the foundations for a more substantial technical guide (Guide L) due out in July. It explains the general principles of sustainability in the building services context, and the bulk of the content is a table of key actions that should be taken at each point in the RIBA Plan of Work.

There’s gold in them there build’n’s

While energy performance certificates and the LCC could be regarded as a continuation of the established regulatory framework, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways of doing things, and Geoff Battle reported to CIBSE conference on the unusual approach his practice is taking to introduce carbon neutral thinking.

“Carbon is the new gold,” says Geoff, whose architectural practice, Battle McCarthy, is taking its clients beyond carbon neutral using an incentive scheme to encourage everyone in the supply chain to do their bit to cut emissions.

His thesis is that now PLCs have caught on to the idea of corporate social responsibility they are realising that their buildings are intimately linked with their corporate image, and are addressing energy management issues (or, in theory, opting for power from renewables). But that can only take them so far down the road. Before the building is occupied, 100 per cent of the carbon was in the materials and the supply chain, so Battle argues that it’s crucial to get this to a minimum.

To achieve this, Battle has established “dcarbon8”, an environmental and carbon “solutions” company that enables clients to collect carbon credits from their supply chains and use them to invest in sustainability charity projects. For example, each supplier at the bottom of a supply chain reduces its carbon emissions in some way; these savings are converted into “carbon vouchers”, which are then passed on to mid-level suppliers who make savings themselves; and so on as savings and “carbon vouchers” accumulate up the chain to reach the client.

For example, a major new warehouse facility in Northamptonshire, built for Sainsbury’s by ProLogis, incorporates a number of sustainability features:

roof lights, low-energy lighting and intelligent lighting control
above-average fabric airtightness
rain water harvesting
solar wall heating which, in conjunction with photovoltaic panels, will provide extra heating to the warehouse area.

But on top of that, ProLogis’ supply chain is generating carbon credits at each step, through dcarbon8, and these will go to the client - Sainsbury’s - to fund green initiatives hand-picked by dcarbon8, through its Planet PositiveTM scheme.

Offsetting has had a bad press lately (justifiably, in some cases), and this scheme might sound a bit ethereal, but it clearly works. Other companies involved so far include Haworth Inc, Kingspan Insulated Panels, Barrett Steel Buildings, and Fitzpatrick Ltd.

Living in a material world

Another specialist working at the outer limits of current knowledge is Graham Dodd of Arup Materials, who had some very wise words for product developers and specifiers alike, namely “Don’t mix your metabolisms!

By this he means that novel construction products are at their most sustainable when “technical” and “biological” materials are kept apart - primarily because this makes both manufacture and recycling so much simpler.

For example, metals should be kept in the technical metabolism cycle as far as possible. This can be achieved by using stainless steel to avoid paint, which ends up as waste. Plastics (composites) need careful thought because some are recyclable while others are not - thermosetting resins give flexibility of form but can’t be recovered, whereas thermoplastics can be reheated and the oil-based part retrieved.

One rather amusing example cited was of the CIBSE conference bag. This year’s was made of jute, which gets some “greenie points”, but the trouble is it incorporated metal tabs, and these should have been kept in the technical metabolism.

More apt, perhaps, was his vision of windows of the future:

moisture pumped from the air gap instead of gas-filling
recoverable thermoplastics for seals
recover coatings or, better still, modify the structure of the glass to avoid the need for coatings.

There was certainly a lot to consider, but as a parting shot, Dodd asked: Do we really need centralised manufacturing? And cited www.fab@home.org as a great source of ideas.

...So, is it fast forward to a shiny, high-tech future, or back to the days of cottage industry? Get Sust readers are in the privileged position of being able to decide. Which way will you go?

Learn more:

	•	Watch selected highlights from CIBSE Conference 2007 via your PC (not Mac compatible) at http://cibse.bright-talk.com/links/cibsenationalconference2007
	•	For the latest on building energy performance certificates (EPCs) visit www.communities.gov.uk (Implementation of EPCs has been moved from 1 June to 1 August, pending a court case brought by RICS.)
	•	British Property Federation www.bpf.org.uk/topics/topic/81/sustainability
	•	PCKO Architects www.pcko.co.uk
	•	Join CIBSE’s Low Carbon Consultants register at www.cibse.org
	•	For a FREE copy of CIBSE’s “Introduction to Sustainability”, contact Caroline Sparrey at CIBSE, csparrey@cibse.org
	•	Battle McCarthy www.battlemccarthy.com/index.html; www.dcarbon8.com (for case studies, including ProLogis, see www.dcarbon8.com/members.php)
	•	Arup Materials www.arup.com