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,...

Graduate of the Year 2013 William Holley We're just over a month from the closing date of  the 2015 Young Engineers Awards, which recognise the best of the next generation of building services engineers. To mark the occasion, we spoke to  William Holley , Graduate Engineer and winner of the 2013 CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year Award. Hi William. So, give us a brief idea of your role at Buro Happold. Graduate Building Services Engineer at BuroHappold based in the Bath Office.  I am currently working on projects in the Sports, Education and Residential Sector. In 2013 you won the CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year Award, what did winning this accolade mean to you? It was a fantastic honour as everyone on the short-list are extremely talented engineers. It has given me great confidence in progressing in the industry and to be an ambassador for building services And what projects have you been working on during the last 12 months? I have been working on a...

With squeezed budgets and ever more ambitious targets, facilities managers are increasingly finding that they have to do more with less. Following his speech at The Facilities Show this week, CIBSE FM Group chair Geoff Prudence expands on how facilities managers can step up to address the gap between a building’s designed performance, and its actual performance once built. Sometimes, the job of a facilities manager is an overwhelming task. They’re the ultimate guardian of their company’s building, and they’re the ones who have to protect the company from loss and litigation on a day-to-day basis. While there is a lot the facilities manager can do to optimise the building’s performance, from implementing defined maintenance strategies to using proper commissioning codes, often a lot of the factors that make their building perform poorly are related to its design. Geoff Prudence addresses a seminar at the Facilities Show And it’s not a minor problem; the energy con...

The Building Performance Awards have undergone a major shakeup for 2016, with the addition of new categories to the line-up. We explain the reasoning behind the introduction of the new awards. Following the launch of another Building Performance Awards , change is in the air for 2016. We have made some alterations to the categories available to enter, with the intention of shining a light on some of the unsung heroes of the built environment. We have introduced five new Project categories replacing the two ‘New Build Project’ and ‘Refurbishment Project’ awards with   Project of the Year – Commercial/Industrial, Project of the Year – Leisure, Project of the Year – Public Use, Project of the Year – Residential and Project of the Year – Retail. This decision was primarily driven by the sheer level of diversity that we experienced in last year’s entries, which make it extremely difficult to compare two projects from radically different sectors. The difference between a...

C IBSE’s newly inaugurated President Nick Mead shares an overview of his first month in office, and sets out some priorities for the future. Welcome everyone to the first of my Presidential blogs, covering my year of office between 2015 and 2016. It’s been a month since I took office, and we have got off to a flying start. I have been looking forward to implementing my primary theme of collaboration, and I have already had the opportunity to talk more about it at over 10 maj or events so far. And they said it would be easy! I thought I was on the back foot from the start, running against the General Election for attention at the AGM, but I couldn’t have asked for a better welcome at the Royal Academy of Engineering. It was here that I was able to  set out my vision  of a braver industry more interested in working together and breaking down silos. I also got the chance to formally meet the board and staff at our May away day, a great opportunity to have a conversat...