Contractors have the answers
M&E contractors have the knowledge and experience to deliver low carbon building solutions, according to a major building client.
Speaking at last week’s M&E Event conference chaired by HVCA chief executive Robert Higgs OBE, London Fire Brigade (LFB) energy manager Ian Shaw said that he was entrusting most of the work on reducing the carbon footprint of 112 fire stations to contractors on a design and build basis.
“They seem to have a better handle on the issues surrounding renewables and microgeneration than consultants,” he told the conference at London’s Olympia. “Contractors have worked through many of the practical problems and can be really helpful with tricky issues such as applying for planning permission.”
The LFB is the third largest firefighting service in the world and is in the middle of an ambitious plan to retrofit all of its stations with low and zero carbon technologies. It already uses CHP, photovoltaics and solar thermal systems on a number of stations, several of which date back to the Victorian era. The service already generates over three per cent of its own electricity on site.
Fit for purpose
Mr Higgs opened the ‘Sustainable Reality’ conference by reporting the remarks of Trade and Industry Minister Peter Mandelson, who said the Government was initiating a review to ensure the construction industry was “fit for purpose” and able to deliver a low carbon future.
Mr Higgs added that the Tories believed governments could not effectively micromanage Britain into a low carbon economy. They say that, in Government, their focus would be on creating the frameworks that will enable British engineering - and British manufacturing - to bring their skills to bear on the decarbonisation of the United Kingdom.
“Will Lord Mandleson’s review of construction recognise that it’s not the builders, but the m&e sector that can make the greatest impact?” asked Mr Higgs (left). “Will it reveal that the m&e sector is not really geared up to “exploit” the opportunities? And what will we do if it does?
“For example, a competent workforce is essential. Do we, have the appropriate skills in the required quantity to meet demand? And if we don’t, what are we doing about it? Is it possible to deliver sustainable building projects through present day procurement techniques? How important is it to establish integrated supply chains, where collaboration and innovation are endemic? And what about the evaluation of tenders based upon lowest initial price; rather than upon the best, whole life value?
“Further targets and more regulations are inevitable – but there is some evidence that ignorance or disregard of the present regulations, is leading to non-compliance. Without compliance, through enforcement, neither this Government nor any future Government is likely to meet its energy and environmental targets. Is Government listening to our pleas?
“An 80% carbon reduction by 2050 is the target – but are we paying sufficient attention to the importance of refurbishing and properly maintaining the existing building stock - 75% of which will still be in existence in 2050?” he added.
Quantum shift
CIBSE chief executive Stephen Matthews agreed adding that there had been a “quantum shift” for the sector in the past 10 years with building services engineers moving to the front of the construction process. However, he added that this created serious challenges for m&e firms and those that “could not cut the mustard” would not survive.
“If I had a choice, I would have chosen this moment to become an engineer as we face the biggest engineering challenge for 150 years,” he said.
He added that the Institution was focused on delivering the necessary training to engineers via online education programmes that were tailored to the demands of employers. He also called for better enforcement of regulations including the new mandatory air conditioning inspections so the industry could get on with the job of improving the performance of existing buildings.
“There is a big rump of existing building stock that is probably not fit for purpose now let alone in 2050,” he added.
The ECA’s group chief executive officer David Pollock also focused on existing buildings as the major challenge. He said sustainability was not all about zero carbon construction, but that energy efficiency must come first.
He predicted that m&e contractors would be the “second architects” as the improvement of m&e services becomes a greater priority and moves further up the project chain. Mr Pollock added that there was no need for a new breed of ‘green installer’ and urged existing practitioners to pick up the additional skills they needed to expand into this area.
Barry Knight from the Carbon Trust emphasised the business case for energy saving. He reported that the Trust had estimated UK businesses could benefit from up to £5bn worth of energy savings because 75 per cent of the existing commercial stock was built before minimum energy performance levels were introduced via the Building Regulations.
He added that the key phase of a building’s life was operation and that a large number of buildings were never properly commissioned.
“We need engineers to go back into buildings and validate their designs because often what is delivered is not what was intended,” said Mr Knight, who formerly worked for Marks & Spencer.
Hierarchy
He urged building users to take advantage of the wide range of financial incentives now available to help them improve the performance of their buildings including grants, zero interest loans from the Carbon Trust, feed-in tariffs when they come into force next April, Renewable Obligation Commitments (ROCs) and renewable partnerships.
“The energy hierarchy is the key strategy,” he added. “You must reduce demand, recover and share heat and then fit renewables. We must all be looking for opportunities to re-use and share energy with neighbouring schemes or users.”
Nick Till of the Commissioning Specialists Association said the reason many buildings were not properly commissioned was due to the widespread use of ‘value engineering’ that left the building operator with a legacy of underperforming equipment.
“Commissioning is a component of Part L [of the Building Regulations] and is supposed to be carried out and witnessed by a competent person. Defects re-testing is usually in the contract, but is very rarely done,” he told the conference. “Flushing and cleaning needs to be improved. You must have the right person on site to make sure commissioning is carried out and that person needs to be given ‘teeth’ so they can ensure contractors meet their responsibilities.”
He added that modern BMS interfaces were extremely complex, which meant many people did not understand they worked and it was vital that end users were given more information post-handover including logbooks.
Raw deal
Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust followed this theme by explaining that the post-occupancy studies his charity carries out reveal that clients “often get a raw deal”. He said commissioning engineers are aware of the problems, but the industry was “missing stuff because we do not get close to buildings in use”.
“We need to make designs simpler. Complexity is the enemy of good performance,” he added.
He identified air tightness as the key to good performance and said there was no point adding “green bling” to buildings if they were leaky. “There is no point having the policy merchants telling us to do clever things with renewables if we can’t do the basic things first.”
The USB studies have shown that there are a lot “unintentional consequences” with building operation including heating and cooling systems operating at the same time and heat recovery working away when the building should be in cooling mode.
Mr Bordass explained how the new Soft Landings concept developed in conjunction with BSRIA was designed to keep the design team involved in buildings after their were occupied to iron out any problems and ensure the systems performed as intended. He said the additional processes involved in Soft Landings could be “stuck onto any procurement programme” to handhold clients for up to the first three years of operation.
Troubleshooters
“The industry needs more troubleshooters and fixers, who can look at systems after they are handed over and put them right,” added Mr Bordass. “Often the designers are not right for this job because they are too close to the design concept.”
He also urged the industry to reject the “nanny state” measures that are driving the renewables market and “dictate we put wind turbines on roofs and silly things like that”. He said the m&e industry had a much better idea of how to deliver low carbon buildings by keeping them simple.
Keith Marshall, chief executive of SummitSkills, reported that the recession could cost up to 100,000 jobs in the construction sector. He said research carried out by the sector skills council had revealed that 10 per cent of social housing projects and 55 per cent of private housing jobs had been cancelled or postponed.
“Postponement is often worse than cancellation,” he said. “Because employers don’t know what to do with their workforce in the meantime.”
He urged firms to re-deploy their staff adding that experience of previous recessions showed that firms who do not train during a downturn are 2.5 times more likely to fail.
“The provisions in the Climate Change Act (2008), including a 26 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020, cannot be achieved without the building services industry,” said Mr Marshall. However, he added that SummitSkills research had showed there was a poor understanding across the sector of the competencies that were needed to deliver the low carbon economy.
Gang
He added that most of the training going on was product rather than technology focused. He urged contractors to skill up quickly to take advantage of the “green agenda that will take the sector out of recession”. Mr Marshall also urged employers to increase the number of apprentices they take on and stated that another piece of research had showed that an apprentice, employed as part of a larger gang of workers, would save an employer 15 per cent in labour costs on large scale projects.
CIBSE vice-president Terry Dix of Arup backed up this call for skills by pointing out that regulations were dramatically increasing the building standards required. He said the new Part L of the Building Regulations, which is due to come into effect next year, would be the last “relatively easy” regulation to achieve as the 25 per cent energy efficiency target it sets is not a challenging target, but future revisions would be far more difficult to meet.
The new Part L sets a standard for buildings to reach B or C ratings on their Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), but by 2016, when Part L is revised again, that would rise to A and by 2019 it would be A+. This is a “steep curve”, according to Mr Dix.
He added that the recast European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), also due next year, would create more challenges particularly as Display Energy Certificates (DECs) would be required on buildings less than 250 sq m. This would mean that an additional 20,000 UK buildings would be legally required to have DECs.
Mr Dix reported that the UK government was still opposing this change, but most of the building services industry felt it was a positive move and should be supported. “Our government is paranoid about creating any further burdens for the business sector that could be seen to endanger economic recovery, but if we do this we will save a lot more carbon.”
Experts
This, along with the launch of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), would create further demand for M&E experts, added Mr Dix.
Mr Shaw of the London Fire Brigade added that Feed-in Tariffs would be another financial driver for the development of sustainable buildings.
“Everything changes in April,” he said. “All of our meters are capable of exporting to the grid, but you can’t turn them on until someone agrees to buy the power from you. FiTs will, therefore, be a huge step forward.”
Currently, exporting to the grid makes little economic sense as most utilities will only pay around 3p per kW/hr for microgenerated electricity and will charge you an administration fee of around £50 a month for the privilege, he explained. With the introduction of FiTs, payment will have to be fair and the prices will be guaranteed for a number of years.
“We are future proofing ourselves,” said Mr Shaw. “If the price of electricity doubles then our payback looks even better.”
Power cuts
Without this kind of additional microgeneration capacity the country faces catastrophic power cuts as early as 2012, according to Nigel Hurshouse from Marks & Spencer, who spoke during the afternoon session chaired by HVCA deputy chief executive Roderick Pettigrew.
He explained how M&S had rolled out its famous ‘Plan A’ with a combination of dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and the use of green power. The company had invested £200m in the energy efficiency programme, but it became cost neutral in its second year because of the amount of savings being made across the retailer’s vast property portfolio.
“We were aiming for a 25 per cent reduction in energy demand across all of our stores by 2012 and have already reached 14.5 per cent,” said Mr Hurshouse. “We are aiming for a 20 per cent improvement in our warehouses (currently at 7 per cent) and then we want to use green energy to supply what is left.”
Currently the company receives 34 per cent of its power from renewables and is aiming for 100 per cent by 2012, although it is already at 100 per cent in Scotland and Wales. Because it is difficult to apply on-site renewables at many of its sites, M&S has invested in hydro power, wind farms and anaerobic digestion plants to provide off-site supplies right across the portfolio.
However, former CIBSE president Terry Wyatt argued that the most cost-effective carbon cutting measure would be to fit demand control management in buildings. ‘Dynamic demand’ or DDM as it is known could dramatically reduce the amount of power supplied by the National Grid.
The Grid has to constantly maintain 3,000 megawatts of ‘spinning reserve’ to cater for spikes in demand at a cost of £80m a year – most of that energy is simply dumped. Mr Wyatt also estimated that it costs ten times that amount to maintain electricity plant on standby and the overall carbon emissions are 10 million tonnes.
Compulsory
DDM could eliminate the need for a spinning reserve because it balances out demand peaks and troughs by turning down individual appliances automatically when the grid is reaching peak demand. DDM continually monitors the status of the grid and the condition of the energy consuming appliances. Special controllers can be plugged into power sockets or built into appliances, but take-up of the technology has been painfully slow, according to Mr Wyatt, who is currently lobbying for an EU directive that would make it compulsory.
Heating systems, fridge freezers, air conditioning units, swimming pools are all processes that are continually topping up and could be turned down on a regular basis without any noticeable drop off in performance. Mr Wyatt said it was essential that this type of automatic switching would be far more effective than smart meters, which still depend on the individual user taking action.
During the debate that ended the day’s programme, Luke Myers of Southampton University called on the UK Government to take a leaf out of Germany’s book and produce a fully planned support programme for low carbon technologies like DDM.
“The German ROC tariff is fully tiered across 20 different technologies for the next 40 years,” he said. “We need something similar so people can invest and plan for the long-term.”
However, Mr Wyatt said we had been let down by our government on too many occasions because they refused to enforce legislation so people ended up installing the cheapest solutions.
“There is more legislation coming through, but I fear we will be left out in the cold again,” he said.
Mr Hurshouse argued that the legislation should be allowed to mature: “The Planning Act, the Climate Change Act and the Energy Act are all in their infancy, but as they become established they will make a big difference,” he said. “We are looking for a major culture change with businesses investing for the long-term future rather than for short-term financial cycles.”
Mr Pettigrew closed the session by encouraging everyone to be optimistic. “There is a lot going on and real progress is being made,” he said. “Culture change is definitely on the cards.”