How to make your building do the things you thought it would

I spent a couple of days last week with a phenomenal group of building performance evaluation experts. I was putting them through two days of workshops to synthesise their findings from looking at projects within Innovate UK's Building Performance Evaluation programme. This tracked buildings through design, build and into operation to find out how they were performing from an energy perspective (spoiler: never as expected).

We talked about some of the issues - the fragmented supply chain, the lack of design input through the later stages of development, challenges with the models we use, and the interaction of people and the buildings they occupy. Lots of food for thought. But we also identified some ideas and insights which can help to address the energy "performance gap" in our new buildings. These thoughts came from discussion of non-domestic buildings:

Design drivers

Design challenges are often expressed in terms of a label - "we'd like an Excellent building" - or based on availability of funding. Sometimes they're guided by fashion and sometimes by the pet favourites of the designer or the lead client ("You want turquoise carpet in the corridors? You're the CEO? Turquoise carpet it is!").

Now, labels can be great - when they are underpinned by a design philosophy. The Passivhaus buildings under the Innovate UK programme seemed to perform well and more closely to expectations. However, labels - along with regulations - can drive design by checklist. Let's see if we can hit this score by adding this system. Let's put this in the building because it will make the model work.

The danger is that buildings are designed to meet these external requirements and not to meet the needs of the clients or occupants. I remember when I was working with the Sustainable Development Commission and the Department for Education looking at schools carbon. We heard stories of new build schools with all sorts of whizzy technologies that were unmanageable, that were too hot or too cold to learn in, that had epic open spaces but atrocious acoustic insulation.

Perhaps the challenge to the design sector is to push clients to really define their needs, not by building fad or feature, but by the service that they need to offer to their employees, their visitors, their users and their customers. What does the building need to do in order to satisfy the needs of the organisation and its people? And if the answer comes in an equation or a piece of kit or a u-value, ask the question again. Keep asking until the answer is expressed in short, simple, people-focused words.

Manageability is key

Multiple energy systems require integration and management; they are complex beasts. They're also a bit sexy: we all want the latest gadget or gizmo and a BMS that looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise (OK, so my cultural references are bit out of date...). However, as an industry, we're doing our clients a disservice if we install systems that they don't have the time, resource or understanding to operate. Even with a high level of technical understanding, some clients will be pressed for the time to manage a complex system effectively - which means it's the wrong system for them and that the building is going to struggle to meet expectations.

Don't blame the user...

There was a recurring phrase (and I was guilty of using it) along the lines that users don't know how to use their buildings. We were hauled up and held accountable for that one. It is not the employee's fault if they leave lights on if the lighting control is too complicated to fathom. It isn't their fault if they bring in an electric heater because their office is too cold to work in.

If we have thought about the user in design, really thought about them, then that will help here. And we have to work harder at handing over our buildings, ensuring that people know what different systems will give them, how they interact, how to use them to get the energy service they want. If someone knows what is expected, they will generally go along - and you can set new rules and expectations in new buildings (a lot of new build schools have been able to institute new rules about discipline or uniform in part because they have a new canvas in which to operate).

But recognise that the user is part of the problem

Our building users might be largely blameless but we are also lazy creatures of habit.

A slight aside, so please indulge me. I'd like you imagine a meeting room, big enough to hold 50-60 people, in a corporate office building. Imagine the space, the furniture, the walls, the windows, the lights, the equipment...

Last week, I was at another conference in a swish meeting room, probably very similar to the one you just imagined. Nice carpet, modern modular furniture. Big windows out over the City.

And:

- Two projectors

- Two large plasma TVs

- 80 lights, all on (yes, 80)

- The blinds down

We were talking about behaviour, habits and social norms. So I asked the question: why is this normal? Why aren't we, as energy and sustainability professionals, questioning the norm that says that 80 lights and the blinds down is the right way of doing things?

I'm not sure that the question went down that well, but the point wasn't the room, it was the wider one about what we accept as normal. A bit more challenge and we might start to re-define normal...

How to get things fixed

Back to building performance: things seem to go wrong by default in our building projects (and this blog from Jonathan Porritt challenges our complacency), so how do we ensure that they get fixed? The issue of liability and the possiblity of litgation tends to send the industry into a panic - and in fairness, it can be very hard to trace where a fault occured. The examples that we discussed where organisations were able to get things remedied after the fact fell into two camps: the big and the belligerent. The "big" were those clients with sufficient "muscle" to get systems fixed, improved or replaced because their portfolio of future projects was a lure to the supplier or contractor in question. The "belligerent" tended to be those building for highly ethical reasons, who were absolutely determined that their building would be exactly as they had imagined and were going to be a pain in the proverbial until it was! Where clients didn't fall into either group, they opted for flight rather than fight: ripping out new systems or simply switching them off.

The above are just a few of the many things that caught my attention during the discussion of non-domestic buildings. I'll blog again next week with some thoughts from our domestic sector discussions, but I'd love to hear your views about things we can do to tackle the performance gap in new build and reftrofit projects. Drop me an email at liz.warren@se-2.co.uk or tweet me: @se2limited. You can find out more about the Innovate UK Building Performance Evaluation programme here (includes details of forthcoming events - I'll be at the one in Bristol!).

Thanks for reading!