The shortlist for the 13 categories of the 2016 Building Performance Awards was revealed at the first day of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineer’s Conference and Exhibition.
A special reception, held during the Conference at the QE II Conference Centre in London, saw the judging panel announce those shortlisted for awards, based on the best set of entries and evidence of measured performance to date.
This year’s awards saw the introduction of four new categories to take account of the popularity seen in the building categories at last year’s awards, introducing new prizes in the Project of the Year category. These included Commercial/Industrial/Retail, Leisure, Public Use and Residential buildings.
Another key theme to emerge from the judging panel’s deliberation was that the housing sector is becoming increasingly important for building services engineers, who must face the problem of reducing the industry’s energy consumption and waste while maintaining comfort and wellbeing.
Hywel Davies, CIBSE technical director and chair of the judging panel, said: “Our awards are unique because they judge how a building performs, not just its design, and we were struck this year by the varied approaches taken, which made judging challenging and interesting.
“By opening up these new categories in the awards, we are responding to a growing recognition of building performance and building performance innovation in different sectors. It’s a very positive sign that performance is being taken seriously across a whole range of industries, and it gives the judging panel a great challenge trying to pick a winner.”
These new categories were joined by familiar awards given in previous years, including the Energy Saving Project of the Year and Energy Management Initiative Award. The judges were particularly impressed by the degree to which the entrants had involved stakeholders in the early stages of design to ensure a better outcome, as well as the inventiveness shown beyond easy energy saving measures.
The winners in each Award category, and the recipient of the overall Carbon Champion of the Year Award 2016, will be announced at the Building Performance Awards event to be held on 24th February 2016 in London, for more information please go to www.cibse.org/bpa