Practical actions to help accelerate the UK’s progress to meeting its 2050 emission target was a focus of the opening day of Build2Perform Live, the flagship event of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers and the UK’s premier event for built environment solutions.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge, a British Engineer, crossbrench member of the House of Lords and Chair of the Carbon Trust Vice Chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and Chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee gave the keynote speech.
She outlined the enormity of the challenge the UK faces in reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and explained the work of the Committee and Adaptation Sub-Committee in helping the UK reach this goal.
Baroness Brown said that the CCC would be “pushing the new government to improve building standards” and urged CIBSE members to pursue practical actions to accelerate progress to close the gap between a building’s predicted energy use and its actual energy use. She said: “This is an area where you [CIBSE members] have a real opportunity to help the UK deliver net zero carbon”.
Following on from the keynote presentation, the decarbonisation of energy theme continued with sessions on heat pump specification and integration, heating and cooling in a low carbon future, hydrogen applications and demand management.
Digitalisation was another big theme. The session on Technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution looked at advances in digital technologies that were fusing the digital world with the physical world; the session explored how this could be used to help building services engineers.
The session included a presentation by Thayla Zomer from The Centre for Digital Built Britain where she outlined the results of case studies looking at what has happened in construction since the government mandated the use of BIM. She explained that many construction firms had adopted BIM “symbolically” but had not put in place the processes to reap maximum benefits from using BIM. She said that if a business wants to introduce a new technology the research showed that “It is not about doing new things in the same way but about doing new things in a new way”.
Fire Safety Engineering was another topical session. This was presented by the authors of the recently revised CIBSE Guide E about some of the key areas of responsibility for building services engineers to prevent and contain fires and to ensure means of escape.
Day two of the event at London’s Olympia includes sessions on changes to Parts L and F of the Building Regulations in addition to sessions on retrofitting buildings and upgrading homes to make them more energy efficient. There are also sessions on the impact of climate impact, including sessions on the resilience of schools, assessing the overheating risk in homes and adapting buildings to severe weather events along with sessions on health and wellbeing, modular and offsite and digitalisation.
Build2Perform has developed to become one of the most authoritative and informative events for everyone involved in the design and operation of buildings. To attend day two of this informative event it is possible to register on the door on Wednesday 28 November at London’s Olympia.