CIBSE’s Home Counties North West (HCNW) Region hosted an event in February, exploring the president’s theme: why building performance often fails to satisfy users.   Stuart Huggins, Head of Maintenance - South at Fresh Student Living , was at the talk and provides his view of the debate.   The discussion focused on: collaboration: integration of user requirements into design; the role of FM; how new technology can add value to post-occupancy evaluation (POE); and how this could feed back to designers. Panel chair Chris Jones discussed the uncertainty that Brexit has brought about for legislation and building compliance. Speakers Kevin Barrett, David Stevens, Mike Darby and Chris Jones focused on planning, briefing and conception. Accelerating cost-fixity, differing agendas, failures to identify user requirements, rapid value engineering, contractual divisions, changes and compressed programmes were all identified as contributors to poor integration, with rushed...

As part of our series on the future of heating in the UK we sat down with Phil Jones, Chair of the  CIBSE CHP/District Heating Group , to discuss his thoughts on the future of the commerical boiler sector in the UK. Will it lose ground to renewables, or could there be a joint solution? What are the biggest challenges facing the commercial boiler sector and how can they be overcome? Firstly, competition from other low carbon heat generators is slowly eating into the commercial boiler sector’s share of the market. The Government has recognized low-carbon heating solutions in its 5th Carbon Budget as a key way of tackling the UK’s carbon footprint, and within the industry initiatives like CIBSE’s Codes of Practice on Heat Networks are making them an attractive alternative financially. They’re also suffering from lower heat demands in buildings. Firstly, new buildings are subject to tighter energy regulations, meaning that they have to be built to be more efficient and use small...