Best & Worst Practices Please!
June 23, 2014 Leave a comment
BSRIA recently held a workshop on behalf of DECC identifying priorities to promote low carbon heating and cooling in non-domestic buildings as part of the development of its low carbon heat strategy. Attendees were drawn from both the Young Engineers and Energy and Sustainability BSRIA networks. Personal thanks to AECOM’s Ant Wilson for chairing the event.
It was a busy day. It recognised that both new and existing buildings have a pivotal role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and by 2050 one of the key requirements will continue to be how we provide heating and cooling.
BSRIA’s Peter Tse and Ian Orme both gave excellent presentations which drew on both good and poor practices identified from more than 50 independently assessed case studies. These, I felt, answered the questions “what does good practice look like”, as well as “what are the consequences when its not followed”.
The workshop session resulted in many suggestions as to priorities for the future. There were a couple which caught my eye.
In response to the suggestion that one of the priorities for DECC should be identifying independently assessed best practice and developing exemplars of new technologies, a number of delegates felt that instances of “bad practice” were even more helpful. It seemed to me that a priority for at least a part of the audience was to know what to avoid doing. Perhaps this reflects the industry’s receptiveness to messages about risk, and that we often learn most when we make mistakes. The emphasis on “independent assessment” also resonated. Many have become sceptical about instances of self-identified “best practice”, and BSRIA’s independent guidance on what works, and what does not, is there to assist the industry do things better.
Another of the workshop themes was on “skills shortages”. After many years of recession, construction companies have euphemistically “right sized”, and this means that we have lost a lot of great talent from the industry. Now that there are green shoots of recovery in construction, there is already talk of an exacerbated “skills gap”. This gap makes it even more challenging for the industry to deliver buildings which meet the needs of their occupiers and where innovation is required to help tackle climate change, and meet the UK’s commitment to “zero carbon” and “very low energy” buildings. This reminded me of another of BSRIA’s strengths – training provision.
Finally there was an astute observation that our recent quest for low carbon buildings has meant that we have worried less about the efficient use of energy, with the net outcome that we can end up with an EPC A rating for carbon design, but a DEC G rating for energy in use. The move to policies that move us to buildings which are both zero carbon and nearly zero energy use will hopefully remedy this, although I suspect this particular journey may contain further unintended consequences before we reach that goal.
The workshop identified many requirements if we are to create environmentally conscious buildings that meet user needs, and importantly maintain these elements over the life of the building.
BSRIA’s mission remains to “make buildings better”. As part of my role, I’m listening to our members and the industry what they expect from BSRIA. I’d like to extend this offer to you, so if you have ideas about BSRIA’s future role, please send them to me: Julia.evans@bsria.co.uk.
To learn more about the BSRIA workshop you can download all the presentations from our website.