UK heat pump market has weathered Covid-19 challenges. Coherent policy support is now needed to unlock its full potential.

March 29, 2021 by 1 Comment

by Krystyna Dawson, BSRIA Commercial Director

BSRIA has released its latest global heat pump market reports, including the eagerly awaited report on the status of the UK heat pump market.

Last spring, deep uncertainty set in across the markets as lockdowns in many countries disrupted trading. There was fear within the heat pump industry of a significant slowdown in what had previously shown dynamic market growth.

Indeed, the global heat pump market posted a decrease of 1.5% in 2020. However, performance varied across regions: with 12% market growth year-on-year, Europe has been at the forefront; the UK also saw positive development with heat pump sales increasing by 9.2% in 2020.  

Green Homes Grant

UK heat pump market sales were helped by the RHI and the Green Homes Grant scheme in 2020. The latter has proven to be important for the market, which has seen sustained growth in the refurbishment segment despite the number of installations in new buildings stalling due to the lower level of new home completions.

However, heat pump installation still represents a major challenge in existing homes. The ongoing review of Part L and Part F of building regulations offer hope that refurbishments in homes and buildings will be conceived with low carbon heating in mind, but the review’s outcomes are yet to become a legal requirement.

Moreover, even though there is market potential for a higher number of heat pump installations in existing homes, the government has, so far, been unable to unlock it. The Saturday 27th March announcement of the closing of the Green Home Grant scheme to new applicants by 31st March 2021 has been yet another example of the disappointing approach to deployment of energy efficiency measures and heat pumps.

UK heat pump market: Achieving a net zero carbon economy

Heat pumps are among the technologies the government has identified as key to achieving a net zero carbon economy by 2050. The Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan for the UK Green Industrial Revolution includes the target to deploy 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.

The UK saw around 37,000 heat pumps sold in 2020. The extra £300 million in funding, moved from the soon-to-be defunct Green Homes Grant to local authorities to enable energy efficiency upgrades for lower income households, may bring additional installations. But even if all 30,000 applicable homes were fitted with heat pumps, the numbers are insufficient to sustain hope of reaching the PM’s ambitious target.. There is potential for more heat pump installations in existing homes, and the interest in heat pumps is growing among home and building owners. The heat pump industry is also working at full speed to deliver innovative products that respond to end-user expectations and environmental challenges.

HVAC industry skills gap

However, unless demand from existing homes and buildings is unlocked at full scale, and until real attention is paid to the sufficient availability of a skilled workforce, the heat pump market will struggle to see the acceleration needed to reach the government target and make a difference in the level of carbon emissions from UK homes and buildings.

Coherent policy and financial support are needed to match the readiness to act on both industry and consumer sides. Integration of heat pumps in a home or a commercial building requires a holistic approach where design and affordability should be considered to deliver carbon savings, cost savings and a healthy and comfortable environment.

Filed under BSRIA, building energy management systems, Building services, buildings, Carbon, carbon dioxide, Climate Change, covid-19, emissions, Energy, energy consumption, energy management, energy perfomance, energy policy, energy-efficiency, Engineering, Environment, environmental, Europe, global warming, Government, Green Agenda, Heating, HVAC, low carbon, Market intelligence, market research, Performance, Technology, Zero Carbon Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The Lyncinerator on… Failure

September 20, 2017 by Leave a comment

Don’t get me started.  Stuck on an interminably delayed flight, I leafed through the airline magazine.  An article on a new Museum of Failure in Sweden caught my eye.  “Only in Scandinavia” I thought, cynically.  But it made interesting reading.  The curator is a psychologist and innovation researcher who got fed up with hearing people talk only about success and not the failures that lay behind it, his view is that development only comes through learning from failure.  The fact that the museum is partly funded by the Swedish governmental department that supports industrial R&D suggests that he is not the only one to think this way.   The museum demonstrates products and services that did not take off, and explains some of the reasons why.  It was a thought provoking and informative article.

This blog was written by Lynne Ceeney, Technical Director at BSRIA

I talked to some colleagues about the museum and the article, and laughingly said I would write a blog titled “BSRIA is good at failure”.   I’m sure you can imagine the raised eyebrows, and concerns that this could be misconstrued.  And in a world of short tweets and clickbait headlines this is a justified concern.  But for an industry like ours, understanding and learning from failure is really important, and maybe we don’t talk about failure enough.

In-use failure of safety critical components and elements simply should not happen.  That’s what testing and inspection are for, although we know that sadly, these are not fail-safe.  But talking about those failures is imperative.  The causes of these failures are shared openly and quickly, so that future incidents can be prevented.  Public enquiries are one route, but for less public failures, as an industry we need to look at the “no blame” culture that the aviation industry has introduced.  (More correctly perhaps, it’s a “just” culture – where people are rewarded for providing safely related failure information.  Deliberately unsafe actions or decisions are still penalised).  If this type of safety critical failure is declared and investigated, it can and should prevent future incidents.  It seems that litigation and insurance may get in the way of the necessary “no blame / just” culture, and there is a definite need for an industry-wide approach to investigate and remedy this.

But what about failures that only interrupt occupant functioning and are inconvenient?  There is a tendency to patch or fix, or to simply replace, and to move on without capturing learning.  This is one of the points where BSRIA comes into its own.  Our Problem Investigation team get to see multiple failures in different buildings, delivered and managed by different teams.  This has two consequences: (1) we are quick at spotting the cause of problems which cannot be simply identified by front line repair teams because we know where to look with our analytics, so front line teams can fix the problem efficiently, and (2) we are able to upcycle our learning into publications, guidance and training to pass preventative knowledge to the industry.  A good example of this is our work on pipework corrosion, which we have been able to investigate in some depth and include our learnings in guidance for water commissioning.  This helps optimise the performance of existing buildings, but importantly we can also influence the design of the next generation of components and buildings.  To increase our impact, we need to encourage more failures to be reported and investigated so that we can better understand trends and problems, and report back to the industry as to how to remedy them.  This too requires an industry culture that recognises the value of learning from failure.

And of course innovation doesn’t happen without failure.   There are of course degrees of failure (the Museum features frozen pizza marketed under the brand of a toothpaste company, I would have loved to have listened to the strategy meeting for that!).  Controlled failure is useful – in our test laboratories we help establish parameters for new products through testing prototypes, and then we test the end product on behalf of the manufacturer.   We move beyond labs though, and we monitor technologies in the real world, in occupied buildings, to see what happens when expert and non-expert users are let loose on equipment and to see how it performs and what doesn’t work so well.  All useful data for the next iteration of designs, products and systems.

So BSRIA is pretty good at failure – investigation, remedy and recommendation for prevention.  And the industry clearly benefits from reporting, investigating and talking about failure.  So we need to think about how we can encourage this culturally, and how to process and use what we find.

The flight, incidentally, was very delayed.  I read the whole magazine.  And I couldn’t blame the pilot, it was a weather issue.  But the failure to deliver on board food because they had sold out – well that was a failure too far, don’t get me started…

 

The Lyncinerator, September 2017.

 

 

 

Filed under best practice, Compliance, guidance, Innovate, maintenance, Performance, Reality Checking, skills, training, Workforce

BSRIA and our approach to BIM

June 29, 2017 by Leave a comment

As part of an upcoming BIM blog series following on from the Open BIM REC webinar series BSRIA answered the following questions.

What has been the key to your success with BIM?

The key to a successful BIM project, based on our current experience, has been using a procurement method which promoted truly collaborative working.  It can be difficult when each party is employed against their own particular scope to ensure everyone works together.  One party may have to decide to do either what is best for the project or what they have been specifically employed to do – these are not always compatible.

How many BIM projects have you been involved in?

We have been involved in one project which has reached site which is trying to adopt BIM Level 2 throughout the project duration.  The project is currently on site and is due to complete in July 2017.

Where was your greatest BIM challenge to start with and what shortcuts are available now (if any) that were not available when you started on your BIM journey?

The greatest challenge was to convert the BIM Level 2 documents into working project processes.  There is a huge gap between the BS/PAS 1192 documents etc. and working project practices and procedures and the amount of effort involved to achieve this shouldn’t be underestimated.

The instances of useful and practical information and tools to enable BIM Level 2 requirements to be incorporated into real projects have not materialised. Some of the tools provided by the Government do not work in practice.  As a result, a more flexible approach to BIM Level 2 is being put in place.

How can industry ensure that clients receive the full benefits of BIM?

The best way for the industry to ensure that clients receive the full benefits of BIM is to listen to the client.  The industry is focussed on telling the client what they will get based on their own skills (often modelling skills rather than true BIM Level 2 capabilities), and too often they don’t look at how the client will use the information generated through the project in the operation of the asset once handed over.

What else can be done to help improve collaboration within the construction industry?

The best way to improve collaboration within the construction industry is to use a form of procurement which truly promotes collaborative working. We’ve been reviewing Integrated Project Insurance as one method and can see some real benefits.

To find out more about BSRIA’s BIM services and advice please visit our website. We also have a collection of BIM blogs by our BSRIA experts. 

Filed under BIM, Building information modelling, Building services, Design, Digital, Performance Tagged with , , , ,

Contractors can’t build well without clients that lead

May 18, 2016 by 2 Comments

Did anyone see the recent news story on the Edinburgh PFI schools with structural failures? In 2016 we shouldn’t be constructing buildings with feeble brickwork. We have Victorian and Edwardian schools that have been standing for over 100 years without these problems. More ironically we have 1960s CLASP schools – built on a budget with the flimsiest of constructions – still standing and performing their role well after their sell-by date. OK, they’re usually freezing in winter and boiling in summer, with asbestos in places a power drill shouldn’t reach, but at least they’re still standing.

The reasons for these high profile failures are easy to park at the door of the PFI process. One can blame cost-cutting, absence of site inspections, and lack of quality control. Some even say that the ceding of Building Control checks to the design and build contractor is a root cause: site labour can’t be trusted to mark their own exam paper when their primary interest is to finish on time and under budget.

Some commentators blame the design process, and bemoan the loss of days of the Building Schools for the Future programme when design quality was overseen by the Commission for Architecture in the Built Environment (CABE). The erstwhile CABE may have tried to be a force for good, but project lead times become ridiculously long and expensive. And would it have prevented structural failures? Hardly likely.

The one cause of these failures that doesn’t get enough press coverage is the important client leadership and quality championing. It can be argued that clients get what clients are willing to pay for, and there’s no industry like the construction industry for delivering something on the cheap. The cost-cutting, the emphasis on time and cost at the expense of quality control – all this can be pinned on a client base that does not lead, demand, oversee, and articulate what it wants well enough to prevent the desired product being delivered at the wrong level of quality at the wrong price.

Which means that clients have to a) get wiser on what can go wrong, b) get smarter with their project management, and c) articulate what they want in terms of performance outcomes. Truly professional designers recognise this, and are prepared to guide their clients through the shark-infested waters of writing their employers requirements. But once that is done the client’s job is not over. They can’t simply hand the job over to the main contractor and turn their back until the job is complete. They need to be closely involved every step of the way – and keep key parties involved beyond practical completion and into the all-importance aftercare phase.

Soft Landings provides a chassis on which focus on performance outcomes can be built. The chassis provides the client with a driving seat to ensure that standards are maintained, along with a shared construction team responsibility to make sure the building is fit for purpose.  The forthcoming BSRIA conference Soft Landings in London on 23 June is a good opportunity to learn how this can be done. It will focus on workshops where problems can be aired and solutions worked through. It will be led by experts in the field who can suggest practical solutions for real-world projects. Why not book a place for you and a client? For more information visit the BSRIA website. 

Filed under BPE, BSRIA, Building Performance Evaluation, buildings, Design, human comfort, Performance, performance gap, Reality Checking, Soft Landings Tagged with , , , ,

A BEMS is the key to unlocking a more sustainable and resilient data centre

March 24, 2016 by Leave a comment

Sam Fitzgerald, Key Account Manager at Trend Control Systems

Sam Fitzgerald, Key Account Manager at Trend Control Systems

Sam Fitzgerald, Key Account Manager at Trend Control Systems, explains the functions of a Building Energy Management System (BEMS) and the vital role this technology can play in today’s state-of-the-art data centres.

In order to minimise the potential for downtime, data centres must be resilient, compliant with all relevant standards and operating procedures, while at the same time minimising overall energy consumption. BEMS have the proven ability to maintain the high levels of uptime and energy efficiency that are demanded by users by proactively monitoring, analysing, understanding and improving a data centre’s building services infrastructure.

Under control

A BEMS monitors, manages and controls building services and plant by ensuring that it operates at maximum levels of efficiency and reliability. It does this by maintaining the optimum balance between conditions, energy use and operating requirements.

By controlling an entire estate’s building services from a centrally managed location, it enhances the ability to interact with, and improve the quality of, the data centre infrastructure. Intelligently understanding and responding to patterns of usage means that, for example, cooling can be fully optimised and lighting turned off in unoccupied areas.

Being aware of the way a data centre works makes it possible to determine which best practices to implement in order to protect IT assets, while minimising costs and the potential for downtime.

Energy levels

It is estimated that data centres account for around three per cent of the world’s total energy consumption and with growing use of the cloud and the rise of the Internet of Things, that figure is only going to go up. Furthermore, according to the Digital Power Group, the sector uses 50 per cent more energy than global aviation and is now considered one of the major sources of global CO2 emissions.

Efficient use of energy is clearly no longer an option and there is a growing raft of legislation and regulation that is specifically designed to ensure that energy consumption and carbon emissions are measured accurately, and that any applicable data is available for analysis.

Given that up to 84 per cent of a data centre’s energy consuming devices can be directly under its control, a BEMS is without doubt the most effective way to gain a true understanding of where savings can be made, monitored and sustained. A properly specified, installed and maintained BEMS will ensure that building services operate in strict accordance with demand, which will also help to deliver the lowest power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating.

Far from being ‘fit and forget’, a BEMS can evolve with the building over a period of time. It must be regularly maintained and, where necessary, adjusted to ensure that it provides the best possible quality of service.

The bigger picture

Sustainability isn’t just about energy usage though. A BEMS can also limit wear and tear on plant equipment by using it more efficiently and making sure that any maintenance issues are highlighted.

In addition, a properly configured BEMS will be scalable, future proof and full backwards compatible. A system that allows easy upgrading and reconfiguration is always preferable – not all systems are the same and the costs of installation can vary depending on the protocol used.

Trend is committed to ensuring the backwards compatibility of its technology. For example, its new IQ®4 controllers are able to communicate with the very first device that it manufactured way back in 1982. The IQ®4 modules are also interchangeable for additional future proofing, scalability and system longevity – all of which can protect the financial investment in a BEMS.

Always on

According to research carried out by Emerson Network Power and the Ponemon Institute, the cost of data centre downtime is just over $7,900 per minute. Total data centre outages in 2013 averaged a recovery time of 119 minutes, equating to about $901,500 in total cost.

As well as being incredibly inconvenient, it’s the damage to mission critical data, impact on organisational productivity, harm to equipment, legal and regulatory repercussions and lost confidence and trust among key stakeholders that can prove difficult to recover from. A data centre should therefore look to build resilience into its operation via a BEMS, minimising any risks associated with situations such as plant failure or environmental conditions falling outside acceptable parameters.

Alarms can be programmed into a BEMS, so that in the event of equipment malfunction the problem can be identified and rectified as quickly as possible. For instance, on an air-handling unit, if a flow sensor highlights that airflow is decreasing it is likely to mean that a filter is blocked. Addressing problems like this early on will ensure that temperature conditions in a data centre remain within those agreed in a service level agreement (SLA), minimising the possibility of penalties. A BEMS can also minimise the amount of time required to carry out such tasks by either automating them or undertaking comprehensive data acquisition.

Rules and regulations

Compliance with statutory legislation, key performance indicators (KPIs) and SLAs are fundamental to the success of any data centre.

A BEMS provides overall visibility of plant energy use and allows personnel to see in real time what’s happening within a facility, therefore helping to make sure that equipment stays within a manufacturer’s specified temperature and/or humidity range. In addition, details of data centre conditions on a 24/7 basis can be logged to provide a full audit trail.

A growing number of data centre operators are also choosing to put an energy management system (EnMS) in place to achieve compliance with ISO 50001 or the standards used to measure data centre efficiency developed by The Green Grid. Having a BEMS in place will help demonstrate a desire to continually improve a data centre’s energy efficiency.

Therefore, the requirement for this technology in data centres is only set to increase.

For further information please call Trend Marketing on 01403 211888 or email marketing@trendcontrols.com.

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Filed under building energy management systems, buildings, Cooling, data centres, Energy, energy management, energy perfomance, Performance Tagged with ,

Post Occupancy Evaluation: operational performance of a refurbished office building

June 16, 2015 by Leave a comment

This blog was written by Dr Michelle Agha-Hossein BEng (Hons), EngD, Sustainable Building Consultant for BSRIA's Sustainable Construction Group

This blog was written by Dr Michelle Agha-Hossein BEng (Hons), EngD,
Sustainable Building Consultant for BSRIA’s Sustainable Construction Group

My Engineering Doctorate study aimed to investigate how and to what extent office building refurbishment can help to improve occupants’ satisfaction, perceived productivity and well-being while optimising building’s operational performance.

A case study approach and a “diagnostic” post-occupancy evaluation style of framework were adopted in this study to evaluate the performance of a recently refurbished 5-storey office building in detail and find opportunities to reduce the gap, if any. The study divided the workplace’s environment into three categories: ‘physical conditions’, ‘interior use of space’ and ‘indoor facilities’. Employee surveys and interviews revealed that interior use of space was the most important aspect of the building influencing occupants’ perceived productivity, well-being and enjoyment at work (happiness) while the improvement of the indoor facilities had no significant effect.

The study also concluded that issues with the physical conditions (such as noise and temperature) causes negative effects on perceived productivity but improving this aspect to a higher level than it is required would not necessarily increase perceived productivity. In contrast, improving the interior use of space aspect of a workplace would increase employees’ perceived productivity proportionally.  These results, however, should be considered with cautious as employee’s satisfaction surveys and interviews revealed that employees’ levels of expectation might have affected their levels of satisfaction with their new work environment.  This could cause some bias in the results of buildings’ performance evaluation. A potential

Old working environment

Old working environment

solution to this issue is to measure occupants’ expectations for their future workplace at the design stage to try to fulfil these expectations as much as possible. How well the new work environment met occupants’ expectations is another factor that should be measured at the post-occupancy stage.

It was also noted that the occupants density at the building was low at the time of the study (17.7m2/person) and that the space was not fully and effectively utilised and more than 50% of the workstations were often not in use. The link between improving space utilisation and the building’s energy consumption as well as its occupants’ perceived

New working environment

New working environment

productivity and well-being merits further investigation. These results are important in the projects where increasing productivity is a key and the budget is limited.

In terms of energy performance and CO2 emission, it was revealed that the actual emission of the building was three times more than the design target. Most of the low cost opportunities identified to reduce the gap were related to the building management and control as well as occupants’ behaviour. I will be doing a webinar very soon on simple energy efficiency tips related to building management and control and occupants’ behaviour. Watch BSRIA’s website for more details about this webinar. 

Filed under Building Performance Evaluation, Building services, energy perfomance, offices, operation and maintenance, Performance, performance gap, POE, Post Occupancy Evaluation Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Why the industry needs to be uncomfortable with current ways of working

March 10, 2015 by Leave a comment

This blog was written by Richard Ogden, Chairman of Buildoffsite

This blog was written by Richard Ogden, Chairman of BuildOffsite

I am delighted to have this opportunity to contribute a blog – particularly at a time when a hugely influential industry like BSRIA is exploring the need for the industry to change its processes.

I have worked in the construction industry for more than 40 years – as client, contractor and property manager. In all that time there has been an almost constant call from voices drawn from right across the industry, from Government and from the media for the industry at large to change its processes and ways of working. To do things differently – to work collaboratively – to partner – to adopt innovative processes – to invest in and adopt new technologies and project management practices and so on. The reason for this clamour is always the same – the need to improve performance and productivity, the need to be less wasteful and more sustainable, to improve the image of the industry, to deliver better value assets, and to make the industry a better and safer place in which to work.

All good and well intentioned stuff but it does seem to be a peculiar feature of the construction industry. I don’t for example hear anything similar coming out of the automotive or consumer products sectors. Industries where investing in change/innovation is constantly being driven by the unforgiving hard edge of competition. OK- I hear (but do not accept) the mantra that construction is in some way different from other industries and frankly I recognise that there is still a whole lot of life left in this view of the industry. I am certainly not going to beat myself up in challenging this position when there is so much more constructive work to be done.

The case for change within construction often comes wrapped up within the covers of a report from an industry or Government appointed committee together with recommendations for action plus of course a set of targets. Inevitably before long yet another report will come delivered by yet another committee having chewed over an almost identical bone which will have come up with broadly similar proposals and another set of targets. All seamless and without any sense of continuity of message or indeed continuity of action.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against this approach as a mechanism to stimulate discussion and debate and indeed I was a member of the Movement for Innovation. However, it’s just that I don’t see much in the way of connection between broad based calls for change and the practical decision taking that goes on day in day out within individual construction businesses looking to win work and improve profitability and competitiveness. Close coupled to this is the reality that the status quo is for many a very comfortable place in which to operate. Unless there is a pressing need for a company to do things differently the chances are that sticking to the knitting will be an attractive option. Why break step if your competitors are operating in much the same way and if business is good.

In my experience it is only when individuals decide that they are uncomfortable with or no longer willing to simply go along with the way things are that meaningful change is likely to happen. If enough individual businesses decide to do things differently then there is the prospect that a sizeable part of the industry will change how it works – not because a report has made recommendations but because they are convinced of the need. Encouraging more decision takers within the industry to be uncomfortable and then encouraging the uncomfortable to take decisive action is how substantive change can happen.

Sometimes change becomes necessary if a business is to survive and prosper. When I worked for a client the cost of construction delivered traditionally became more and more expensive until the point was reached where the business could no longer afford to invest in new construction projects because the cost was not justified by the revenue that the investment would deliver. Think about that for a minute we were a serial client wanting to invest in new construction to help grow our business and to create jobs but the harsh reality was that we had been priced out of the UK market. I suspect that it will not be long before this phenomenon reappears in some sectors of the UK market.

Our decision was quick in coming – if the traditional industry was not able or willing to provide us with the built assets at a price we could afford and to deliver within the timescale in which we needed the assets then we would change our construction model and our supply chains and take on board the challenge of stripping out a significant amount of the waste that we knew to exist within the traditional industry in order to deliver the projects at a price that worked for us and within a timeframe that was acceptable to us. Working in close collaboration with our project partners we demonstrated that it was possible to simplify processes, strip out waste, adopt standardisation as much as possible and most importantly take that essential step of maximising the use of factory made offsite solutions to minimise the need for construction work to be carried out on site. Constructing on site from a set of commodity materials and products is inevitably going to be uncertain and potentially challenging involving low levels of site based productivity, indifferent quality and uncertainty of build programme.

The results we achieved were powerfully impressive in terms of the cash savings made, the additional value we gained and the much faster build times that we achieved. All this – including protecting the margins of our suppliers – was achieved by minimising all forms of waste. That was just fine as far as I was concerned because as a client given the choice I would not want to pay for waste and inefficient processes. I would want to pay for right first time quality, build programmes that are realistic and cost in use that is meaningful.

The learning acquired as a result of this forced change stood my company in good stead and became our standard construction practice. Our approach was also taken up by many other leading clients.

We were not talking about rocket science. The steps we followed involved a relatively simple approach including: giving clear leadership; being sure about what we wanted to achieve; listening to our suppliers and encouraging their advice; being collectively prepared to rethink every aspect of construction – absolutely no sacred cows; not being prepared to accept the message that this or that couldn’t be done – it usually can; be open minded; recognising that there will always be scope to do things even better next time around.

This approach and in particular a recognition that other than for site specific elements it is almost always better to assemble building and civil engineering structures on site is fundamental to the work programme that Buildoffsite has been advocating for more than 10 years. Together with our Membership we will continue to make the case for the increased use of offsite solutions based on sharing information on the innovative projects that our Members have delivered, working together to develop new innovative solutions, promoting new technologies and encouraging the take up of information modelling and the application of lean principles to identify opportunities for introducing more efficient processes.

I am delighted that our Membership continues to grow bringing together leading clients, suppliers, investors, skills and research organisations and so on. The common denominator is that our Membership and those organisations we work with to partner knowledge transfer are all committed to do things better – at a practical level to make change happen and to support continuous improvement.

Front cover imageThe case for offsite solutions will be proven to the satisfaction of clients and suppliers by the tangible project benefits delivered by projects that incorporate offsite methods. This applies just as much to the delivery of building services as it does to all other construction elements. However, there will be no free lunch. An approach based on the use of offsite solutions will need to deserve to be commercially successful. If offsite solutions fail to be competitive with traditional methods on whatever basis the customer deems appropriate then they will not be adopted.  That is precisely how markets should operate. However, I hope that in comparing the performance of offsite solutions with traditional solutions the assessment will include all relevant factors that impact on value including time, cost, quality and cost in use. For example it can still be the case that the precise cost of a potential offsite solution will be compared with the theoretical and highly uncertain predicted cost of traditional construction. As construction inflation increases this simplistic method of assessing project value is likely to become increasingly unreliable. We are working closely with the industry’s professional institutions to improve the understanding of offsite construction and to support the development of new skills.

I have no doubt that the case for offsite solutions will continue to grow and the market will expand rapidly across all sectors. I also have no doubt that we have only just started to scratch the surface in terms of our understanding of what can be achieved in reducing cost, improving client value and improving the performance of the industry. Remaining open minded and being committed to challenge the status quo will continue to drive innovation and to effect the changes that we are called on to support.

If I can pass on one final suggestion it would be to encourage everyone in the industry to be uncomfortable with current ways of working. If we could achieve this we would be well positioned to move on to effecting change.

If anyone wants to learn more about Buildoffsite check out our web site www.buildoffsite.com

Filed under best practice, Building services, buildings, BuildOffsite, Design, innovation, Performance, performance gap, skills, Sustainability, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Emerging themes from Innovate UK’s BPE programme

November 3, 2014 by Leave a comment

This blog was written by Peter Tse, Principal Design Consultant for BSRIA's Sustainable Construction Group

This blog was written by Peter Tse, Principal Design Consultant for BSRIA’s Sustainable Construction Group

Back in May 2010, Innovate UK (formally TSB) embarked on four year programme, providing £8m funding to support case study investigations of domestic new build and non-domestic new build and major refurbishment projects.  In total the programme has supported 100 successful projects to provide a significant body of work, that provide insights on the performance of various design strategies, building fabric, target performances, construction methods and occupancy patterns, handover and operational practices.  This work will be shared across the industry providing evidence based information, increasing industry understanding to support closing the loop between theory and practice, ensuring the delivery of zero carbon new buildings is more readily and widely achievable.

Currently project teams are concluding their investigations and collating their findings, and dissemination of the results of the programme will begin in earnest in the first half of 2015.  However, as the programme has progressed, there are some consistent themes that are emerging.  Focussing on the non-domestic projects, I will address a couple of these emerging themes.

The first is around adopting innovative building systems to deliver low energy consumption and comfortable conditions, and unintended consequences associated with these technologies.  This covers a broad spectrum of building technologies including solar thermal, heat pumps, biomass boilers, earth tubes, rainwater harvesting, controls and natural ventilation strategies.  Innovation in its essence will have some inherent teething problems, which is often overlooked in the charge towards reaching our carbon reduction targets.  The obvious default stance is to specify proven and reliable technologies which are delivered by a team that is familiar with the technology, but our journey towards delivering true low carbon building in operation would inevitably be prolonged.

An additional level of complexity can be added with innovative systems; one healthcare facility introduced solar thermal and a combined heat and power (chp) unit, to supplement natural gas fired boilers for heating and hot water requirements. With several sources of heat complexity is added to the control strategy, trying to strike a balance between changing heat demands of the building and optimisation of the system.  This complexity, coupled with a requirement for increased operator understanding often leads to system underperformance.

The practicalities, maintenance and associated costs of innovative systems is seldom fully realised by clients.  An office reported success of the rainwater harvesting system, but were surprised at the frequency of filter changes to mitigate the system being blocked.  Another office had to regulate a fan associated with earth tube ventilation system, as running at a higher speed caused too much noise for occupants.  A school had ingress of water to an underground wood chip store rendering the biomass boiler idle for significant periods.  A hotel employed automatic external blinds which retracted in windy conditions to avoid damage, thus offering no shade to occupants during sunny, windy days.

DC-Innovative-Construction-Services-Building-Maintenance1It is clear a reality checking process is required for design decisions to mitigate such matters.  BSRIA’s Pitstopping guide, which resides within the Soft Landings framework describes a process that allows construction teams to periodically reconsider critical design issues by focusing on the perspective of the end user.  This also provides an opportunity for the client to understand the full ramifications of implementing innovative building systems for a more informed decision, and to align client expectations.

The second theme involves the process in delivering innovative technologies, with a particular a focus on commissioning and handover.  The commissioning period residing at the end of the build process is often susceptible to being squeezed.  When the decision has been taken to adopt an innovative building system, there is increased pressure during commissioning to ensure the system is operating as intended.  With the additional complexity associated with innovative technologies, it is vital the commissioning time is adequate to complete comprehensive scenario based testing; how is hot water delivered if the solar thermal does not provide a contribution, how is the building operator alerted the status of the system, how can the operator diagnose the problem, how long can the system operate without the solar thermal contribution without major detrimental effects etc.  To ease the burden on the commissioning period, it is clear commissioning should not be afterthought, but an integral part of the build process.

The commissioning period also signals a time where many of the stakeholders with tacit knowledge of the innovative building systems have changing responsibilities. It is vital this knowledge is captured for users before the opportunity is lost.  Building manuals, user guides and logbooks need to be completed so users can relate to their building environment, understand control of the environment and capture major alterations.

Figure 1 - South façade showing café, street and incubator office blockMany projects reported that guidance for both users and operators was often lacking, with several BPE teams developing guidance as part of their projects to support users.  Commonly BPE teams have also struggled to find initial design intent and operational strategy associated with innovative technologies, highlighting the importance of handover documentation.  Training of users is another key element to knowledge continuity, but several projects reported changes in staff being a core reason for innovative systems underperforming, as documentation was not kept up to date.  The value of clear concise user guidance is evident; BSRIA’s Building Manual and Building User Guides helps individuals responsible for creating building logbook and user guides.

In this blog, I’ve only addressed a couple of areas in regards to emerging themes, to hear more about findings from the programme, come hear me speak at the Energy Management Exhibition (EMEX), at Excel, London on the 20th November, 2014.  Additionally, join the BPE community at connect.innovateuk.org, and search for Building Performance Evaluation.

Filed under Building Management, Building Performance Evaluation, Building services, EMEX, energy management, guidance, Occupant Satisfaction, operation and maintenance, Performance, performance gap, Technology Strategy Board Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

BSRIA Residential Network launch

September 22, 2014 by Leave a comment

saryu2

This blog was written by Saryu Vatal, Senior Consultant and Researcher for BSRIA Sustainable Construction Group

The BSRIA Residential Network was launched on the 11th of September, kindly hosted by the Wellcome Trust and well attended by over 50 delegates, comprising of both members and invited guests.  Ian Orme Business Manager for the Sustainable Construction Group welcomed the delegates and introduced briefly the intention of the network and how BSRIA would like to engage with all stakeholders to help make residential development better.

The event was chaired by Richard Partington of Richards Partington Architects, architect advisor for the Zero Carbon Hub and co-chair of the steering group for their Performance Gap project.

The day started with a summary of the current policy context for energy efficiency standards in new homes and challenges and opportunities for low energy retrofits.

The recently concluded Performance Gap project for the DCLG provided a starting point for discussing issues that impacted new build residential developments. For this project, an extensive evidence gathering and review exercise was carried and over 60 issues were identified as contributing to the gap between the designed and measured energy use in homes.  Of these the ones prioritised for action and further research, along with the shortcomings in skills and knowledge highlighted through the end-to-end process review of over 20 new developments,  formed the core of the Hub’s recommendations to the Government.

Rick Holland was present to give an update on the Government’s continued support for funding research into construction processes via Innovate UK (previously Technology Strategy Board), both for domestic and non-domestic buildings.

A major programme from this funding stream looking at Building Performance Evaluation is coming to a close at the end of September and early stage findings from meta-data analysis were presented by Ian Mawditt of Fourwalls.  This focused on the common issues found with the design, installation and operation of MVHR systems and data from whole house co-heating tests. The final findings will be disseminated via Innovate UK and will include information from all projects across the seven funding tranches.

The analysis of key design specifications that would impact the performance of the mechanical ventilation systems raised some interesting observations about common assumptions made at early design stages.  Common themes from the commissioned air flow rates were also discussed.  The performance of homes built to Passivhaus standard was notably better, which emphasised the importance of process control on site, but also highlighted the fact that, when needed, the industry was able to deliver a high quality product (homes).

The presentations of the day concluded with a summary of how BSRIA would like to engage with its members to try and address various shortcomings identified through research.  Members are invited to put forward areas where there is a need for additional support, in the form of training, guidance and impartial technical expertise.

Calculator leaned on a little house with red roofA panel discussion was facilitated by the event chair in which a range of topics were discussed.  These included issues around the effective design, installation and modelling of district heating in residential and mixed use schemes and variations in standards and assumptions between the EU and the UK.  Ashley Bateson was able to provide an update on standards being developed by CIBSE.

The conflict between supporting innovative technology and the confidence in product and performance data to allow these to be accepted into mainstream and within compliance tools was also highlighted as an area of concern.

The impact of users on the actual energy performance in homes has not been included in some key research projects although in reality this has significant impact.  While this lies beyond the scope of a developer’s influence, key decisions about the complexity of services, controls interface and handover procedures all contribute towards the usability of homes.  Instances of how internet based tools and were successfully employed in some projects to engage with occupants to develop a feedback and learning mechanism were highlighted.

There were concerns voiced about the problem of overheating in new and newly refurbished homes, especially when dealing with vulnerable occupant groups like the elderly.  The Zero Carbon Hub are working on a project looking at the evidence and aim to help develop the assessment standards and methods for evaluating and mitigating risks in new homes.

BSRIA sees itself well-placed to engage with its members and the wider industry to help address the various shortcomings and areas of concern highlighted.  Subsequent network events have been planned to focus on specific topics in detail and we are seeking feedback from members to help structure our efforts in the most effective and useful manner.

Presentations from all speakers can be found on the networks page of the BSRIA website.

Filed under BPE, BSRIA, Building Performance Evaluation, Building Regulations, Building services, Compliance, dwellings, housing, maintenance, Performance, performance gap, residential network Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Designing for change

August 1, 2014 by 1 Comment

Ian Harman of Marflow Hydronics (BSRIA Members)

Ian Harman of Marflow Hydronics (BSRIA Members)

With the industry moving at such a fast pace, new innovations are being introduced all of the time. Manufacturers are inventing great new products that offer many benefits; solving the problems of the present to provide a better future. The biggest problem that they face, though, is launching these products on to the market. This is where BIM could really help. 

I think it’s fair to say that people don’t really like change. We like to stick to what we know and what we feel comfortable with. This seems to be the case in our industry. Many people, from consultants to installers, are still completing jobs and planning projects in the same way they’ve been doing it for years; that is in very traditional ways. A prime example is how there is still much use of two port control systems despite Pressure Independent Control Valves having been around now for quite a while. These newer products are faster to implement and more reliable in the long term, yet there is still a reluctance with some people to adopt the new technology.

It’s true that with any new product there’s inevitably a big learning curve to using them, and often training can be time consuming. There’s also the fear of risk. If people use a new product that they’re not so familiar with then there’s always the chance that it will go wrong. This could be because the user isn’t so experienced at using it, but also it could turn out that it wasn’t the ideal product after all and sometimes knowledge and experience can really help when making decisions. This is where BIM steps in.

Using BIM, manufacturers can create models, which I like to think of as ‘Lego blocks’, that they can send to customers to introduce them to a product. And they can do this long before any decisions have been made, at the very initial stages. The ‘Lego block’ would be a visually simplified model that not only clearly defines the spatial envelope and connection points, but also includes a wealth of ‘metadata’. This ‘metadata’ contains data fields specific to the particular products, such as flow rates for valves or electrical loads for powered devices.

BIM - Marflow Hydronics
That all means that clients can look at the products in detail and trial them in their plans from the very beginning. They will be given the time to properly analysis products and see how they will work within the system and how they will interact with other components.

By starting with the end in mind and properly understanding the system at the initial stage, it will help to future proof the project far down the line. It’s also the cheapest time to detect any issues. The easiest time to make a design or selection change is at the beginning of a project and BIM facilitates this in a much more user friendly manner than ever before. This would undoubtedly give them much more confidence in the products they’re looking to use and would, very importantly, remove that fear of risk.

BIM provides users with the time and ability to put much more thought into their projects earlier on, minimising that risk further down the line. This then increases the chance of far more successful project that works with the best products, potentially the latest and more developed ones, and there’s much more chance of it being on time and to budget.

BIM 2 - Marflow HydronicsManufacturers, like Marflow Hydronics, have been doing this to help bring new products into the limelight that otherwise customers may have been apprehensive about. More importantly, this has helped all parties get the right products specified when they may not have been otherwise. BIM may be the ideal solution to help us move more quickly into the future using more innovative products and having many of the niggling issues that have been around for so long vastly reduced, if not eliminated.

This was a guest post by Ian Harman, Technical Applications Engineer at Marflow Hydronics, BSRIA Member

If you are looking to find out more information about BIM, BSRIA runs two specific training courses:

There are also several other blog posts focused on BIM as well as a BSRIA BIM Network. 

Filed under BIM, Building information modelling, Building services, Construction, Design, documentation, information management, Marflow Hydronics, operation and maintenance, Performance Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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