After the past challenging months, the world has started to embrace the ‘new normal’. Companies were focusing their efforts in adapting to the current situation in the short term but are now looking to the future to keep their market position ahead of their competition. This includes keeping your employees’ knowledge updated and skills sharp by providing them with training. But how can you keep track of your employees’ development remotely? Utilising corporate training offerings will enable you to monitor their development remotely and, thus, improve their work performance. 1. Monitor performance . Online platforms enable you to allocate training modules and view your employees’ training progress. You can see which employees you have allocated courses to, and track who has started, and who has completed them. 2. Effective time management . Online learning training can be completed at your employees’ own pace. They can dip in and out of the training whenever they want so they can fit it...

Full name : Gary Marshall Tell us a little about yourself Hopefully, I strive to be approachable and committed to others with recognised expertise and always easy to do communicate with and together we can share our expertise and experience and pass it on to others for the future sustainability of our environment and cities of tomorrow. I have over 30 years in the Building Services Industry and I have accumulated a vast level of knowledge and expertise, both technically, commercially. I am a very passionate individual and strive for excellence in every part of the Project build process. Attention to detail is key to the successful delivery of any Project. I have learnt and adapted a lot of the car production processes into delivering a first-class Critical Facility Project, resilient to multiple premature failure scenarios. I have split the whole design process down into more manageable sectors with specific professional experts in each individual field.  I have also adapted techni...

To celebrate World Environment Day , we hear from Kirsten Johansen of CIBSE's Resilient Cities Group on the need for green growth in our cities: The loss of biodiversity, together with the changing climate forms an existential planet emergency. Both for the world’s cities and economies.  At the 2020 World Economic Forum – nature was top of the agenda. The precedence of this was set when the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems report claimed up to one million species face extinction by 2050.  Biodiversity needs to be fostered significantly more within the world’s cities. Over half of the population live within cities and it is important to understand the integration of humans and cities - it is our collective responsibility to ensure we include not only pleasant green and blue spaces, but living urban nature to include habitats for wild species. Urban Design The benefits of biodiversity within cities is profound. Current urban planning approaches typically...

With the ongoing COVID-19 situation our ‘normal’ lives might seem like they are on pause, and our opportunities for personal and professional development have disappeared, however, CIBSE, as a leading authority in building services engineering, is still prioritising its duty to support its members, and the wider building services community, during these uncertain times. This is why CIBSE Training is focussing its attention on new online learning opportunities. Virtual Learning . The CIBSE Training Team has been working hard to adapt your ‘classroom’ learning experience to the online medium, so you can still benefit from our knowledgeable trainers and valuable content. Virtual Learning gives you access to video-recorded sessions; supportive text, to enhance your learning experience; quizzes, to test your understanding of the course; and a CPD certificate upon completion.  The virtual learning portfolio has been expanding, including courses from various key areas in building services...

Heat Pumps: Essential to heating emission targets, NOW! You can always find reasons not to do something! However, sometimes not taking action is not an option and this is the case with climate change. Yet there is a solution which can significantly contribute to huge reductions on carbon (& NOx & SOx etc) emissions from one of the largest emitters of carbon: heating systems. This is a technology that is available right now and in fact been around for decades! With electricity grid carbon factors less than half what they were when the 2006 building regulations were drafted, and continuing to reduce, the ultra-low emission credentials of electrically driven heat pumps is undeniable, and therefore it is unsurprising that the Climate Change Committee places its emphasis on heat pumps to deliver the ‘lion’s share’ of carbon reduction in the heating sector. They are recommending 1 million heat pumps to be installed annually by the mid 2030s and 19 million in place by 2050. And yes, i...

Adrian Cairns CEng MCIBSE is a Building Services Director at BAM Construct UK. He recently worked as the Building Services Lead Engineer on the Nightingale Hospital for the Yorkshire and the Humber , helping to turn the Harrogate Convention Centre into a 500-bed hospital for COVID-19 patients in just twelve days. As part of the #WeAreCIBSE campaign, celebrating the hard-work and commitment in the building services community, we hear about Adrian’s experience working on this life-saving project. I am a Building Services Director at BAM Construct UK, working in the North East region and based in Leeds. I lead our in-house M&E delivery team for BAM Services Engineering. In this region we are a team of 45 M&E Engineers, Managers and BIM modelling staff. As a BAM Director, I also form part of the regional senior management team and get involved in all aspects of the construction process from project inception to tendering, procurement, design, installation, commissionin...