Don’t get lost in a sustainability blizzard
Delivering sustainable buildings — Mike McCloskey.
There are huge business opportunities for the building-services sector in delivering the aspirations of politicians — but the industry must ensure it has the necessary skills, says HVCA President
Mike McCloskey.The push for sustainable buildings is turning into an avalanche of research, learned texts and new and proposed legislation — which clearly all has its place. However, the Achilles heel is practical implementation. The specialist trades and professional designers are all floundering to make sense of the welter of information and, more importantly, pick through it all to find out what is relevant. As far as the Government is concerned, it is full steam ahead — and every department seems to have its own plan for how climate change is to be tackled and sustainability achieved. Communities & Local Government Minister Angela Smith has just launched two new Parliamentary reports updating the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004 and the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006. These seek to beef up the Code for Sustainable Homes and highlight plans for a Review of Existing Buildings, which will examine how to improve energy and water efficiency as well as looking at the impacts on climate change of all existing stock. ‘There is overwhelming evidence of climate change and a broad consensus that urgent action is needed,’ said Ms Smith. ‘As buildings account for around half of the UK’s total carbon emissions, it is vital that we take action to make them as sustainable and energy efficient as possible. These two reports highlight the progress that has been made, but there is still a long way to go. ‘Tougher standards such as Part L of Building Regulations are a start, but we must do more. The Code for Sustainable Homes is set to help us achieve zero-carbon new homes by 2016. The challenge for Government and industry is now to work together to push even harder to extend improvements to all other types of buildings too.’
Accelerating Her department (DCLG) is talking about accelerating the timetable to make all new homes ‘zero carbon’ within a decade and to apply this aim to other sectors such as new public buildings and existing homes. In 2009, it is expected that the European Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) will be extended to cover smaller buildings outside the public sector. There is an important question to answer. Can the industry cope with what is already proposed — let alone getting to grips with any ‘acceleration’? Consultations are going on all over the place looking at a draft Planning Policy Statement on Climate Change, a joint Communities & Local Government/Defra study of water-efficiency standards and the timetable for implementation of the Code for Sustainable Homes. The revised Part L, which has now been in force for a year, is intended to improve the energy efficiency standards of new homes (and refurbishments of existing stock) by 40%. It is great stuff, extremely worthy — but in serious danger of falling flat on its face unless there is a clear strategy for implementing it all. 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, usually because the building services were never properly commissioned. This has to be the first task. There is little point pushing ahead with exciting, new renewable technologies if the existing systems are not working properly as all the potential savings will be lost. In most cases, the initial design of a building-services system contains the right aspirations and many of the right techniques, but on too many occasions something goes badly wrong between that point and implementation. This is why consulting engineers need to work hand in glove with contractors as early as possible in the process to ensure the systems they design can be properly and accurately implemented — especially now as the drive for sustainable buildings gathers pace. As contractors, our task is to ensure we have the right number of skilled people to do the work. As David Frise, chairman of the HVCA’s sustainability-issues group pointed out recently: ‘Renewable and low-carbon technologies present a fantastic opportunity for our profession, but we are not training anything like the right amount or calibre of people to do the work.’ He urged more employers to tackle this problem and more colleges to run the right kind of courses with enough practical elements to ensure engineers are fully equipped to work with the full range of technologies on site. To that I would add a plea to the Government to step back from the theory, look at the practicalities and consider how the technical trades are going to resource these programmes.
Commissioning The latest changes to the Building Regulations place commissioning right at the heart of any installation these days, and there must now be a strong argument for annual building ‘MoTs’ to meet the requirements of the EPBD. These would make continuous commissioning a key tactic in reducing environmental waste, but the systems must be set up from the outset to cope with this. Facilities managers must be involved from the outset, trained and encouraged to schedule in periodic recommissioning as part of their standard maintenance plans. After all, electrical systems are now subject to a 5-yearly safety check, so why not have a similar regime in place to ensure building-services systems are operating as designed? Building-services contractors have the skills to provide remedial work, put under-performing systems back on track and start to lower the emissions from existing buildings, which must be the priority. Local authorities accept they have to embrace low-carbon solutions and are setting targets — such as London’s 20% renewables rule for all planning applications submitted from 2010 onwards. However, most are unclear about how to assess and implement sustainability to achieve their own targets. Consultants and contractors, working in tandem, can provide both this advice and the practical implementation. But all of this depends on the specialist building-services sector seizing the opportunity. We are already seeing a steady influx of unregistered and unqualified people into the industry on the back of the growing demand for renewable solutions — 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, geothermal, and wind power will only deliver energy savings and reduced carbon emissions if they are properly integrated with existing services. Where necessary, those existing services need to be recommissioned. If we do not respond to the challenge, others will plug the gaps to the detriment of end users and the environment. With this in mind, the HVCA and the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA) has developed a sustainability agenda for the whole M&E sector. The first step is a widespread campaign to raise awareness among their combined membership, followed by a definition of the additional skills required along with the necessary vocational training and workforce development. HVCA members will be promoted as experts in ‘integrated energy systems’ — able to take an holistic approach to the growing building-services-engineering needs of customers and clients. However, the whole sector needs to set the standards, recruit the skilled people and work together as early as possible in the design process to turn the politicians’ rhetoric and wordy reports into something close to reality.
For more information about the sustainability Agenda for Action go to the HVCA web site.
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