Monthly Archives: May 2013

Building Physics takes flight

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I am really excited this month to have finally reached the point of establishing the Royal Academy of Engineering Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design.

UK Construction is changing rapidly as the industry assimilates new requirements for sustainability and new working practices. The education of construction professionals is also under scrutiny for its relevance to this new paradigm. The Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design will develop new research-led teaching for engineers. They will prepare engineering graduates to deliver the sustainable buildings the UK needs at substantially lower cost than is presently achieved.

This initiative stems from two reports that I wrote for the Royal Academy of Engineering: Engineering a Low Carbon Built Environment and The Case for Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design.

The first of these set out the field of building physics as one of scientific investigation into building energy performance, distinct from the activities of thermal analysis and building services engineering. It argued that an understanding of building physics was essential to the creation of low cost, low carbon buildings that save energy through good design rather than ecobling. The second report set out the first ever econometric analysis of the benefits of engineering education. The proposition was that by changing construction engineering education we could influence change in the construction industry from the grassroots. Graduates trained in building physics, energy performance and systems engineering would be equipped to innovate and solve future problems through design rather than ecobling. We developed a model for Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design and evaluated the impact of the potential graduates on UK construction. This showed that graduates from just four such centres could benefit the UK economy to the tune of billions of pounds.

Experimental Building Physics at the University of Bath

Practical experiments in Building Physics being conducted at the University of Bath

We have now completed the selection of the four universities to pilot the Centres of Excellence concept. Loughborough University, University College London, Sheffield University and Heriot Watt University are going to try out this model for us. The four universities will collaborate on delivering a common approach to interdisciplinary education for engineers while maintaining their own individual characters and interests. Our common aim is, as Prof. Chris Wise from UCL puts it so nicely, “to work together to grow the world’s best technological thinkers and practitioners in sustainable building design”.

With the level of enthusiasm for this change being shown by these universities I am feeling really optimistic for the future of sustainable construction in the UK for the first time in a while. Just imagine what could happen when the benefits in student recruitment and outcomes are demonstrated and the rest of the UK universities follow suit.

What Have the Romans (Government) Ever Done for Us?

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The long awaited Government Industrial Strategy for Construction will be published next month. Here’s a suggestion for what it could say and what I think it probably will say:

What it could say:

The UK construction industry is capable of great feats of innovation, but it needs the support of enlightened, intelligent clients to deliver to its fullest potential. This Government will therefore address the shortcomings of public sector procurement to demonstrate that the public sector can be an intelligent client which no longer stifles innovation, focussing on least first cost rather than value and attempting to transfer all risk to the private sector.

What it probably will say:

The UK construction industry does not innovate often enough. Therefore, whilst maintaining the current public procurement structures that favour compliance and accountability over innovation, Government will introduce ever more restrictive rules that will force the Construction Industry to adopt expensive and un-necessary practices such as BIM in the hope that this will in turn force more collaborative working and somehow lead to more innovation.

Government, national and local presently persists in pursuing risk transfer over innovation and least cost instead of best value in public sector procurement. The recent spending cuts have unfortunately merely reinforced the focus on least first cost by setting short term financial targets. A better outcome for the country could be achieved by refocusing procurement on value so that savings are replicated year on year rather than pursuing least cost today at the expense of tomorrow.

Government also continues with its rhetoric about supporting SMEs and promoting innovation in construction. However it persists in policies that are aimed at transferring all possible risks to another party. Thus it creates the conditions for procurement under which only the largest and safest (ie least innovative) companies can be selected.

It is clear that BIM is going to be used as a Trojan Horse to try and force collaborative working on an industry that is poor at collaboration. However the industry does not collaborate as the present public sector procurement structures actively dis-incentivise collaboration. I am a fan of BIM as a tool, but not as a blunt legislative instrument (look at what has happened to renewables and BREEAM). Until procurement and incentives for construction are re-designed collaboration simply will not happen, with or without BIM. In the meantime the expense of deploying BIM will further prevent Government procurement from engaging with the Innovative SMEs that it purports to support.

Government now has the chance to be an intelligent client for construction and in doing so provide the leadership for the rest of the public sector, and eventually the private sector, to become intelligent clients too. Government could demonstrate the benefits of client intelligence in delivering lower cost, better performing, sustainable construction. Government needs to invest in technical expertise within its departments. Much of what Government is presently doing is evidently well intentioned, but ultimately flawed as it simply does not recognise the differences between construction and other industry sectors. Initiatives and incentives that work in manufacturing or aerospace simply do not translate into the construction sector. A restored, expert civil service would consult with the construction industry to create an intelligent system for procurement, financing and operating public sector projects to everybody’s benefit.

I want to hear that the Industrial Strategy for Construction will commit Government to investing in the reform and demonstration that is essential for the industry to move forward and be genuinely sustainable. Not only in what it constructs, but for the sake of our economy, to become sustainable as an industrial sector, able to compete against international encroachment into UK construction. If the Government cannot do this for us we may as well give up and go home.

Fashion Not Function

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The ridiculous fashion for urban wind turbines is still showing no sign of abating with the erection of BSkyB’s new turbine at its West London studio complex. Perhaps the continuing political insistence for ineffective on-site renewable generation is to blame. It is not just successive national governments and fashion-following local planning regulations, but all too often we find that corporates are now playing to the populism of green. This collective disregard for engineering reality forces building owners and developers to pay for sub-optimal solutions and forces architects and engineers to try and justify the essentially unjustifiable in defence of what has been forced on them. AJ Footprint 25th April

If you ask a primary school class where we should build wind turbines, the answers usually range from “on top of hills” to “out at sea”, anywhere it is windy. By the time those children arrive at the final year of their architectural degrees the answer has often become “attached to my building as an icon”.

Unfortunately the very nature of buildings is to disrupt the smooth flow of wind which is essential for efficient energy generation. The increased friction due to surface roughness in urban areas reduces the potential power in the wind dramatically. At the height of BSkyB’s turbine, it is only half that of rural areas. In city centres the power available may be just 15% of the open country equivalent (full explanation here).

This location effect is generally accounted for by applying a capacity factor to the theoretical maximum generation of a turbine. The rule of thumb for UK wind power is to assume a capacity factor of 30%-35% for good onshore installations. The generation figures quoted for BSkyB indicate a capacity factor of just less than 15%. Thus the same turbine, at the same cost, could generate more than twice as much electricity if it was not shackled to a building. This doubling in output would more than offset the grid distribution losses (around 6%) to deliver the electricity back to BSkyB in West London.

Two identical Enercon E70 Turbines. The one on the left produces 3.5GWh whilst the one on the right produces 5.7GWh.

Two identical Enercon E70 Turbines. The one on the left produces 3.5GWh pa whilst the one on the right produces 5.7GWh pa. The difference is due to surface friction.

Apart from the very obvious branding potential, urban wind turbines have little going for them. It is time that politicians, national, local and corporate, stopped interfering and let engineers and architects make the best technical systems decisions for genuinely sustainable development.