By Brian Morris, Managing Director of Beverley Clifton Morris , winner of Building Services Consultancy of the year (up to 100 employees) 2014 and 2015 As I made my way down to Grosvenor House, London in February I had no expectations of winning an Award. My company, BCM, was a finalist in the Building Services Consultancy of the Year (under 100 employees) category at the CIBSE Awards 2015. As we headed to the hotel reception to greet my colleagues and our guests, I was determined to enjoy the evening, though had resigned myself to not being a winner on this occasion. In 2014, we won the award. It was the first time we had entered and being called on stage had taken me by surprise. It was a fantastic, overwhelming experience and it took a good few days before it truly sunk in. To be named as a finalist in 2015 and attend as ‘reigning champions’ was an honour. It recognised that we’d had an incredible 12 months in terms of growth, business wins, and key strategic develo

The Government has announced in its recent Productivity Plan that the zero carbon buildings target in England is to be dropped . This has been widely criticised , but England and the rest of the UK are still committed to all new buildings being “nearly zero energy” from January 2021 through the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Hywel Davies , Technical Director of CIBSE, proposes a practical realisation of this target. Background The coalition government was committed to zero carbon homes from 2016 and zero carbon non-domestic buildings from 2019. Those goals were described back in the early days of the coalition, and George Osborne wasted little time in announcing that the idea of ‘zero carbon’ buildings, combining energy efficiency measures and “Allowable Solutions”, is finished. The sudden change of policy has been widely criticised for removing a long standing objective that had driven innovation in the construction sector. This undermines those in the indus

After months of drafting, an extensive public consultation and many rounds of input from several major organisations, the Heat Networks: Code of Practice for the UK was finally unveiled. But it wasn’t just an important night for the Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE) and CIBSE, for whom this was a ‘first of its kind’ document. It marks an important milestone for the future of heating in the UK. And that’s not an idle boast; the Government already holds heat networks to be an important asset in the fight against energy insecurity, having issued a target of 14% of the UK’s heat to be supplied this way. As a result, we have had a tremendous level of support from the Department of Energy and Climate Change who provided funding for the completion of the Code and development of the training programme. CIBSE's Phil Jones, ADE's Time Rotheray and DECC's David Wagstaff launch the Code The reason for this stretches all the way back to the oil crises of the 1970s,