Saint Gobain Debate Final

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Doug King

This is it. The final arguments are up on the Saint Gobain Debate Site, along with guest comments from Jon Bootland. The voting is still neck and neck so please make up your own mind.

I believe this debate has been really helpful in flushing out issues that we in construction must address. The debated question is somewhat ambiguous and the arguments deliberately provocative. We’ve received terrific contributions, which have extended the argument beyond what the debaters could have managed. The voting has been neck and neck throughout, which suggests that opinion really is divided.

Re-reading the arguments and contributions, there is one thing that stands out for me: the confusion over what sustainability actually means. We have debated various sub-sets of meaning but still have reached no useful definition of what a sustainable building is.

We’ve discussed rating systems which focus on impacts of constructing and/or operating a building. But these don’t address whether a building will be a benefit or a burden to society. Whether it will be loved and endure, or be hated and demolished. Whether it promotes wellbeing amongst its occupants and users. Local plans address some social and economic issues, but do not address indicators such as ONS’s national wellbeing or BRE’s societal cost of poor housing.

It is hard to evaluate these intangible, checklist unfriendly, issues. But we must confront these truths if we are to make the transition to a sustainable construction industry.

Most certainly we need to improve our understanding of building performance and the prediction models so that they better reflect actual outcomes. We must improve the education and skills of construction professionals and equip ourselves to tackle these issues. Then we must improve our communications in order to present truthful information about building performance in a useful way.

These however, are simply the business improvement actions required of a progressive 21st Century industry. Merely doing what is necessary will not transform us into a sustainable construction industry.

We should not delude ourselves that the transition to genuinely sustainable construction will be easy or cheap. It will require conviction and commitment.

Would a simple definition of a sustainable building be useful anyway? I think not.

Sustainability does not arise from a label applied to buildings. Sustainable is not something you do, sustainable is something that you are. Sustainability is an ethos, a thought process. Sustainability informs everything you do.

Creating ‘sustainable’ labels incentivises us to strive towards that particular goal, often at the expense of other significant issues. As long as we persist in labeling buildings using checklists, we will promote cherry-picking from a limited range of issues, glorifying a few good features to conceal the bad.

Delft University compared environmental rating systems and discovered that it was toughest to get a high score under BREEAM. This should be a mark of excellence. Instead it means that LEED has become the system of choice as it is simpler to gain the highest rating. The effort that should go into sustainable design has been diverted into effort to find the lowest hurdle.

To become a sustainable industry, we need to apply our professionalism and our imagination to eliminating all which is damaging or degrading.

We need to identify all possible harms that could arise from construction, operation and inhabitation of buildings and work to eliminate them.

We need to strive for Zero Harm. Zero Harm to the biosphere that makes life possible on this planet. Zero Harm to our fellow humans, including those as yet unborn. Of course my dream of truly Zero Harm construction is practically unachievable. But surely it is our duty as 21st Century professionals to get as close as we can.

Construction is good at managing risk. Why can’t we apply the same processes to managing harm?

Rather than using sustainability checklists that only address the common features of buildings, we would create harm mitigation plans bespoke to each building project. The development team could clearly demonstrate their understanding of the true range of possible impacts and the measures that they have taken to mitigate them. Such an approach also provides the essential flexibility required for design compromise, which is lacking in some of the checklist ratings.

If Sherlock Holmes were alive today, I am certain that he would concur: “When we have eliminated all possible harm, that which remains must be sustainable”. Isn’t that worth striving for?

Saint Gobain Debate Day 4

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Doug King

Yesterday should have seen the rebuttal statements published in Saint Gobain’s debate. However for some reason their site has not been updated, so for those of you who want to keep up, here is my second piece arguing for the motion. If this argument sways you in any way please go to the debate site and vote. Remember you can change your mind and you can vote as often as you like before 19th December.

There is no useful definition of what a sustainable building is

My opposer seems to agree that, whilst there are assessments for a range of building performance issues, there is no overall useful definition of what a sustainable building is. Some assessments focus on construction, some on building performance, some on design quality and some on health and wellbeing. But where is the definition of a sustainable building that considers all of these aspects, and also the ones that the construction industry does not dare to mention?

We have both lighted on the Georgian townhouse as an example of a sustainable typology, even though sustainability, in its current sense, could not have been further from the architects’ minds. In fact Georgian townhouses are amongst the hardest properties to upgrade to current standards of energy efficiency, given their solid wall construction, often inhabited roof spaces and, typically, conservation status. This is sufficient demonstration alone that there is no useful definition of what a sustainable building is.

But what about those issues that the construction industry does not face up to? The industry is good at optimising buildings once a developer has already determined to build. How about the fundamental decision of what and where to build? Where are the sustainability indicators for communities who’s economic life is bled out of them by (sustainably constructed) out of town malls, for Code 4 housing estates built the wrong side of bypasses away from schools and shops, for the proposed demolition of a recent exemplar superstore because of a restrictive covenant on the building’s re-use?

The Qatar World Cup stadium has already been described as the world’s most sustainable stadium on the basis that it will use solar energy to power the vast air conditioning system necessary to stop the players collapsing in an environment hostile to sporting endeavour. Is this really sustainable? Could these resources not be better deployed elsewhere? How about solar power for schools in developing nations? Oh, sorry – they’re not wealthy enough to buy sustainability.

Then consider the shocking rates of death and injury amongst migrant workers building these facilities. We must surely ask ourselves – what is the purpose of this construction? Is it a genuine contribution to human development? How have the developers, designers and contractors acted to protect the rights and freedoms of present and future generations?

In order to be genuinely sustainable, we have to consider a much, much wider range of issues than we in construction are prepared for. The complete gamut of issues cannot possibly be condensed into a simple definition or single assessment methodology. Just because we measure whatever issues first occur to us does not mean that we have necessarily addressed the germane issues.

To presume that a singular method could reveal any meaningful understanding of the relative sustainability of a hospital and an office is nonsense. Businesses have their own measures of sustainable performance and success. In commercial enterprises these involve profitability and productivity ratios, whilst hospitals measure performance in terms of patient recovery times. These key business performance indicators will not yield to the methods of analysis applied in construction. In fact we barely even speak the same language.

Still further, these business indicators do not capture the social impacts on workers and other users of their services. Where are the measures for the impacts of long hours in a stressful frontline job? How do we account for affordable housing being an unaffordable commute away from a job in the building that we have so carefully and sustainably built?

We are only just beginning to realise what it might mean to really be sustainable.

Genuine sustainable construction requires expertise far beyond that which we can muster amongst construction professionals. Yet presently, we do not appear to be prepared to accept this fact. Creating a genuinely sustainable built environment to enable sustainable change in society will take immense effort and commitment. Yet, we persist in insisting that we can do it on the cheap with our simple checklist assessments. Perhaps we shouldn’t blame the industry alone, since our political leadership also lacks any significant commitment to sustainability.

For me however, the real problem is that the very notion of sustainability has become so deeply debased in the service of finance that it no longer has any currency.

In a 2009 poll, Building magazine asked the question: “Will Sustainability Survive the Recession?” Over half the respondents reported that “clients were already asking them to drop sustainability elements”. Fortunately, Building helpfully defined ‘sustainability elements’ as “renewable energy systems and sustainable building services”.

How can an element possibly be sustainable if its incorporation in a building is subject to whim and economic fair weather? If a building is sustainable, it will bring social and economic benefits that would make it more attractive in a recession, not less. This simply reveals that, in the common perception, sustainability has become synonymous with EcoBling. As EcoBling does not deliver tangible benefits it is considered an unnecessary expense to be borne only in placation of political vagaries.

The planning authorities, whether local or national, have created this situation by their rigid insistence for on-site renewables as the principal mark of sustainable development regardless of other environmental, social and economic impacts.

Well ‘sustainability elements’ are clearly back in vogue, to judge by the recent slew of project proposals appearing in the press, but we still have no useful definition of what a sustainable building is.

Sustainable Development or Emperor’s New Clothes?

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Doug King

Many readers of this blog will be aware that, in the late 1990s, I was involved in designing the flagship Sainsburys store at Bugsby Way in Greenwich, an exemplar of sustainable design.

Photo: Millennium Sainsbury's

The store was the Channel 4 People’s choice for Building of the Year, received Millennium Product status, won the RIBA Journal’s Sustainability Award and was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize. It was described by Building magazine as “the most radical design in the history of retailing.” Yet, just 15 years later, this exemplar building is facing demolition because of perverse, anti-competitive action.

Sainsburys have decided that they need a megastore with non-food retail and that the existing site is simply not big enough, despite the existing store having been designed for extension. Sainsburys have therefore applied for planning permission for a new store at nearby Charlton. This leaves the obvious question of what will happen to the store that, according to Michael Evamy, architecure critic for the Independent, is: “the most carefully thought about supermarket in the world, ever.”

Well, a planning application for redevelopment has now been submitted by IKEA. As an IKEA store is typically a big box shed, they have proposed knocking down the existing store and adjacent unit to make space. This blog by 853 shows not only the extent of the proposed IKEA development, but also the paucity of information about the proposed development that the company is prepared to share with the public and its potential customers.

Now, I have never seen an IKEA store with daylight or natural ventilation. They are dark, air-conditioned boxes and the information available from IKEA leads us to suspect that this new store will not be any different. However the pitch they have fed to Greenwich planners is that the new building will incorporate the latest sustainable technologies. By this of course they mean EcoBling.

The original store was designed to minimise its energy consumption without resorting to renewable generation. It was a true fabric first approach from long before the term was coined, as shown by my original design proposals, which I published to encourage plagiarism. At the time I estimated that the energy efficiency approach could reduce the carbon emissions by around half compared to a typical store. I have since calculated that, if all the original features have been maintained, this translates to a saving of around £500,000 per annum on the current energy costs for the store!

Sainsbury Interior

So how have we come to the parlous state of affairs when a new development claims to be sustainable despite demolishing a 15 year old, exemplar energy efficient building to replace it with an EcoBling powered box with no natural light or air?

Well, this blog by Councillor Alex Grant, who was a member of the planning committee that granted permission for the Sainsburys store, hints at the unsavoury truth. Apparently this situation has come about because of a restrictive covenant achieved by Sainsburys that prevents the site being used by any other food retailer. Thus, their flagship store will be demolished simply to stop anyone else from using it. An apalling ‘if I can’t have it, no-one can’ attitude to restricting open and fair competition that would benefit the residents of Greenwich.

This state of affairs reveals that claims of ‘sustainability’ made by many big businesses and much of the commercial property sector is nothing more than the Emperor’s new clothes.

My friend and colleague, Paul Hinkin, with whom I collaborated on Sainsburys and several other exemplar buildings since, has started a petition to oppose the destruction of this historically and socially important building. If you feel that this building has more merit from continued existence than from extinction then please sign it.

Saint Gobain Debate Day 1

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Doug King

For those who are not following on Twitter or have otherwise missed it for some reason, this week I am battling it out online in the inaugural Saint Gobain Debate. I am proposing the motion that: ‘There is no useful definition of what a sustainable building is’, which is being opposed by Jon Chadwick of Associated Architects.

You can follow the debate, contribute and vote here.

Otherwise here is a copy of my opening argument:

There is no useful definition of what a sustainable building is.

In order to have a definition of what a ‘sustainable building’ is we must first have a definition for ‘sustainable’. A widely recognised definition is that of ‘sustainable development’ taken from the Brundtland Commission report Our Common Future:

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

In this context however, ‘development’ is human development, not the bricks and mortar development of real estate. The Brundtland Definition is big picture stuff and cannot so easily be applied to individual buildings. Nevertheless, we should respect the principle. All human activity has impacts, construction and operation of buildings particularly so. We must certainly work hard to deliver functional and cost effective buildings at the lowest possible impact.

We have at our disposal numerous means of assessing impacts. BREEAM, the BRE Environmental Assessment Method, is probably the most comprehensive. BREEAM has been refined over many years to assess a building’s impacts in: energy and water use, health and wellbeing, pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management. However, even this comprehensive checklist of impacts does not make BREEAM a measure of how sustainable the finished building might be.

Whilst BREEAM is one of the better checklists, we often see sustainable credentials claimed on much more flimsy grounds, such as the Passivhaus Standard or even Building Regulations SBEM. Referring to these limited issue assessments as making a building sustainable misleads the public and potential purchasers. It creates belief that buildings can magically become sustainable through the addition technology fixes to address headline issues like carbon emission.

That road leads to Eco-Bling. It is now common to see specious claims to sustainability made on the grounds of urban wind power or city centre biomass heating.

Focusing on any limited range of issues, without considering the entire system within which buildings exist, can lead to perversely un-sustainable outcomes. The principal competitor to BREEAM is LEED, ‘Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design’. Despite its arresting name, recent research by Professor John Schofield in the USA reveals that a high LEED score has no statistically significant impact on primary fuel consumption, nor carbon emissions associated with a building.

If an internationally recognised ‘sustainability’ rating system has no discernible impact on its eponymous objectives, there can be no justification for any claim on lesser grounds.

So, what is the alternative? The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘sustainable’ as “to be capable of enduring”. Thus, before labelling a building ‘sustainable’, we must consider its useful longevity. We need to have some measure of the period over which the impacts will amortise. In other words, we need to assess the quality of the design and its appeal to society. Whether it is best fitted to the occupants’ needs or is simply a money spinner for a developer. Most importantly, we need to assess whether the design is sufficiently flexible for a building to endure through numerous incarnations.

I suggest that some of the most sustainable buildings in UK cities today are Georgian terraced houses. The Georgian design ideals of proportion, space and light ensured that many buildings were valued by subsequent generations. Not only for their beauty. These buildings have proven sufficiently flexible to be reincarnated as shops, offices, multiple dwellings, museums and many other uses. Far from conforming to a modern checklist approach to sustainability, these buildings were simply designed thoughtfully with their future users in mind.

I believe that this is the key to sustainable buildings. A sustainable building is one that its occupants will want to go on occupying. A sustainable building is one that enables its occupants to be more comfortable and more productive, as well as consuming less energy and less resources. Sustainable buildings bring business enhancing performance benefits to commercial occupiers. How can any building be sustainable that does not contribute to the social development of its occupants and its neighbours?

Without assessing longevity, social contribution and business performance benefits equally with impacts and costs, we cannot make any judgements about a building’s real worth.

At least for now, there truly is no useful definition of what a sustainable building is!

Smart Buildings & People

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Doug King

Back in October I was invited to Westminster to brief The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee about Smart Buildings. I chose to talk about Smart Buildings and People. What follows is the brief written summary of my presentation which has been submitted for publication in the proceedings. The full slideshow is at the foot of the page.

Summary of a Presentation to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee

22^nd October 2013

Doug King FREng FInstP FCIBSE FEI HonFRIBA
Building Performance Consultant, Doug King Consulting
Visiting Professor of Building Physics, University of Bath

Information

The term ‘smart’ is applied to a host of enabling technologies in modern buildings, the ‘smart meter’ being probably the most familiar. Examination of smart meter technology allows us to begin to understand interactions between people and technology applicable to both dwellings and commercial buildings.

The equivalent of domestic smart meters, meters that signal half hourly consumption data to the utility company, have existed for many years in commercial buildings. If equipped with an in-home display (IHD) or commercial equivalent, the building occupiers can also access the data. However, in both cases the term ‘smart meter’ is a misnomer, as the meter merely conveys information. It is up to the occupier to do something smart with that information.

In-home displays (IHDs) need to present information in context in order to be useful. A PV generation monitor (right) can be easily calibrated against the size of array to present contextualised information. It is impossibly complex to calibrate an in-home display (left) against all the variety in UK households.

The presentation of data alone is of little value without context. Stevenson and Leaman (2010) said: “It is not enough to presume that the information from ‘smart metering’ will encourage people to reduce their energy consumption any more than a car speedometer will reduce speeding.” A car speedometer provides information, but the driver must have knowledge of the speed limit in order to correctly interpret that information. Without significantly improved energy numeracy amongst the populace it is unlikely that the smart meter roll out will deliver its full energy savings potential.

Engagement

A Study by Van Dam, Bakker & Van Hal (2010) found that novelty appears to play a significant role in the savings reported in short term trials of in-home displays. Revisiting households that had previously participated in a pilot study they found that the initial savings had generally not been maintained. Moreover, the lapse rate was more or less consistent regardless of how well the participants had engaged with their in-home display during and after the pilot study.

Results of a study by Van Dam et al (2010) suggest that energy savings achieved in pilot studies of in-home displays may be transitory regardless of the level of engagement by homeowners.

The study indicates a clear lapse towards prior behaviour over time, but was unable to corroborate the hypothesis that the magnitude of energy savings achieved correlates to level of interaction with the in-home display. It is clear that, if we are to make the most of the opportunity of smart metering, we need to better understand people’s interpretation of, and response to, energy information and tailor it to their needs in both domestic and commercial situations.

Control

It is not only in-home displays that need to be designed with attention to the human interface. The control systems in commercial buildings are complex, yet the design effort put into the user interfaces is poor. Bordass, Leaman & Bunn (2007) found that: “If user controls are ambiguous in intent, poorly labelled, or fail to show whether anything has changed when they are operated, then the systems that lie behind them are unlikely to operate effectively or efficiently.”

User interfaces need to be engaging, where possible intuitive, and make it easy for individuals to do the right thing, particularly given the increasing tendency to install complex controls in domestic situations, where the understanding of control functions is already poor.

Ambiguous controls create confusion and can lead to users distrusting the system or simply ignoring subsequent useful information or control signals.

Further, if control systems do not provide building occupants with the functionality and convenience that they expect, or feel they have a right to, then they will take actions to override the control systems in order to achieve what they consider to be more favourable outcomes. Thus, it is common in commercial buildings to find thermostatic controls being used as on/off switches and for daylight sensors to be covered with sticky tape to ensure that the electric lights remain on.

Management

Building structures are designed for long lifespans, whilst smart building technologies will fail or become obsolete several times during that span. As with any information technology system, it is essential that a clear upgrade path is available and is followed throughout the life of the building. All too often, building controls are allowed to become obsolete, making subsequent repair prohibitively expensive and leading to the controls being abandoned.

Completed in 1997 as an exemplar of energy efficiency, The BRE Environmental Building featured external shades which were designed to respond automatically to changing daylight and over-heating conditions. However, over time the state of the art control system became obsolete and the actuators progressively failed and were not replaced. Instead, simple manual blinds were installed to control glare and overheating. Today, the louvres remain static and the building’s occupants rarely adjust the blinds, even when daylight levels fall, as the lighting controls compensate by bringing the lights on even in the middle of the day.

Cohen, Ruyssevelt, Standeven, Bordass & Leaman (1998) wrote: “The myth of [building] intelligence is that it is ‘fit and forget’: buy it, and the electronics will do the rest. The actuality is that it is very much ‘fit and manage’. Complex engineering and control systems tend to work best in an environment in which the occupier can resource a high level of facilities and engineering management. Problems start to occur where sophisticated technology is applied in a management-poor environment.”

Design

To deliver smart buildings that sustain their smartness requires more thorough design than is presently the norm in construction. Greater interaction is needed between the building’s users and designers, both at project inception, to clearly articulate requirements, and after handover, to tune the systems and gather operational feedback. There also needs to be a much more robust system for communicating design and performance goals throughout the chain from design through delivery to operation.

Waide, Ure, Karagianni, Birling & Bordass (2013) wrote: “Building Automation Technology often fails to deliver its full potential because those specifying the system have limited understanding of how it will be operated.” They go on to assert: “The best design can only come from a thorough understanding of operation.” In order to be truly smart a building must be designed to be ‘user centric’. It needs to accommodate the habits, needs, desires and capabilities of those who will use and operate it.

People will use buildings in ways that can never be anticipated by the designers. A smart building must be flexible enough to accommodate the needs and desires of the users without forcing them into compromises, which will result in them ultimately overriding the systems.

Procurement

Mapping the typical, mass market construction process onto a systems engineering diagram (below) indicates that there are distinct gaps in the key generative areas for integrated design of smart buildings.

ConstructionSystem01

As an alternative one could propose a construction process diagram, including confirmation of performance outcomes and feedback into subsequent designs, that may be capable of delivering genuinely smart and sustainable buildings.

ConstructionSystem02

However, we need to acknowledge that the present methods of procurement in both the public and private sector do not allow the requisite interaction between users and system designers before and after the construction contract period. If we are to deliver smart and sustainable buildings we first need to address the shortcomings in the procurement process.

Conclusion

For a building to be smart, it must be designed to get the best from both its automated systems and from the intelligence and understanding of its occupants. It needs to be robust, cost-effective and not too complicated. Smart building design must account for the habits, needs, desires and capabilities of those who will use and operate them.

This creates major challenges. Although there are exemplars, in typical UK construction scant attention is paid to human factors, to the design of the product, and to the creation of properly integrated systems. Shortcuts are taken in the installation, commissioning and handover. Provision of complete operating information and user training is rare. Systems designers do not learn from performance in use.

These challenges are not insuperable. However, they will need to be addressed seriously if the potential benefits of smart buildings are to be realised. We need to significantly improve skills and education amongst the designers, constructors and operators of smart buildings. We must put the users at the heart of smart building design and operation.

“A ‘smart building’ is one that doesn’t make its occupants look stupid”
Adrian Leaman – The Useable Buildings Trust

References

Bordass, W., Leaman, A., and Bunn R. (2007) ‘Controls for end users: A guide for good design and implementation’ British Controls Industry Association report 1/2007, BSRIA
Cohen, R., Ruyssevelt, P., Standeven, M., Bordass, B. and Leaman, A. (1998) ‘Building intelligence in use: lessons from the Probe project’ Conference ‘Intelligent buildings: realising the benefits’, BRE Garston, 6-8th October 1998
Stevenson, F. and Leaman, A. (2010) ‘Evaluating housing performance in relation to human behaviour: new challenges’, Building Research & Information, 38: 5
van Dam, S. , Bakker, C. and van Hal, J. (2010) ‘Home energy monitors: impact over the medium-term’, Building Research & Information, 38: 5
Waide, P., Ure, J., Karagianni, N., Birling, G. and Bordass, B. (2013) ‘The scope for energy and CO₂ savings in the EU through the use of building automation technology’, Report for the European Copper Institute. Waide Strategic Efficiency Limited

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