Accepting the challenge
As one of the leading professional organisations for building performance in the UK, CIBSE is often invited to submit evidence to Parliament as it considers new laws to pass, scrub and amend. This is one of the most important functions that the Institution carries out, both because it makes Parliament more informed in its decisions, and because it gives building services engineers a voice at the highest level.
It can be a lengthy
process, as reports and recommendations can take months or even years to
produce, but last week produced a significant moment when CIBSE was cited multiple
times in the long-anticipated ‘Building Better Places’ report by the House of
Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment.
So it’s a significant step to have your industry’s potential
formally recognised, but is it one we’re ready for? While exciting, the
implication of this report is also very challenging, engineering in the built environment
is important to the health of the planet and society, so engineers have to
demonstrate that they’re willing and able to make a difference. Not just to
their buildings, but to society as a whole.
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| Westminster has embraced the built environment to tackle climate change |
Building performance is almost a no-brainer – any client
with a social conscience or even just an eye on their bottom line wants their
building to be more efficient and cheaper to run, and there is growing
recognition that better buildings make for happier and more productive users.
And before, this might have been enough. The client is happy with their
product, the engineer is satisfied with a job well done. But now, the challenge
is to think ‘beyond buildings’ to the wider community.
So what does that mean? Well it might be more helpful to take
a systems thinking approach. Good performance doesn't stop at a specific
component, a specific system or even a specific building, it extends out of the
door and into all the other buildings in the community, and into the facilities
that serve them. That sounds like a big job, and it is, but luckily the built
environment sector is a diverse one, full of every kind of skill necessary to
succeed – they just need to work together.
Realising that everything is connected in the face of
climate change is a good start, and it all flows from there. It means seeing
the bigger picture in every decision you make; your building might not get much
benefit out of a heat network, but what if you had a word with the designers of
the new housing estate next door to see if you could share one? Is there a
material you could you that would enhance the outside of your building that
would benefit the community too, like a living wall for example? How does your
building fit in with the people around it, are there public spaces or are you
just a high-performing island, disconnected from the local environment?
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| 2016 BPA winner Arboreal Architecture's Clapham Retrofit used reclaimed and period materials to fit in with the local community, with advice from English Heritage |
The degree to which we can spread total building performance
into local communities is limited only by our imaginations and our willingness
to collaborate. Back at the level we started at, helping strategically to shape
the future of the built environment is just as important as what you do in your
own back yard. This very report is evidence of that fact: the recommendation to
create a new Chief Advisor for the Built
Environment may not have gone anywhere had it not been supported by a number of
institutions, including CIBSE, presenting a united front.
The ‘Building Better Places’ report is a major opportunity.
It places building services engineering on a pedestal front-and-centre, a place
we've always known it deserves. The key now is to grasp the opportunity, start
to live out the role in every area of your professional life, and encourage
others to do the same. That way, engineers can truly become leaders in
creating sustainable built environment
Although I agree with much of this, I would very much like to see the Institution as "CIBSE" present and consult its Council about formal representations made on behalf of the Institution as a whole. It is, precisely, "grasping the opportunity" to broaden opinion, give it stability, and as summarised in the last line, give the whole Institution a sense of moral purpose.
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