BSRIA highlight a recent event hosted on low energy homes and discuss what the future holds for the sector…
BSRIA recently staged an event on ‘The Future of Low Energy Homes’ as part of its Residential Network. It’s been several months since the Government announced that there will no longer be the requirement for all new domestic build to achieve a zero-carbon standard from 2016. But what impact will this have on the future of the house building industry including quality and energy efficiency standards?
The event demonstrated what the Government’s plans now are following abandonment of its commitment to zero-carbon and an insight into what the scaling back of targets could potentially mean for the industry: specifically in context of energy efficiency, performance gap and quality.
Paul DeCort, DCLG, presented ‘the government view’ and outlined the DCLG Single Departmental Plan, the key points were: increasing housing supply; increasing home ownership; devolving power and budgets to boost local growth in England; and supporting strong communities with excellent public services. He commented that this could be achieved via new build and existing stock.
The DECC Single Departmental Plan covers: security and resilience to ensure the UK has a secure and resilient energy system; keeping energy bills as low as possible for households and businesses to secure ambitious international action on climate change; and reduce carbon emissions cost-effectively at home. Paul said: “An energy legacy will manage the UK’s energy legacy safely and responsibly.”
The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) requires that EU Member States report to the Commission on whether current energy performance requirements for new and existing buildings are cost optimal by June 2017. EPBD requires that energy performance requirements be reviewed at least every five years with a view to achieving cost levels. Paul said: “Transparency is key.”
Part R – Broadband: sets requirements for in built building infrastructure for high speed networks and applies to all types of new building and major renovation work. It comes into force for all building work on or after 1 January 2017 and applies only to the fabric of building, not the external infrastructure.
Tassos Kougionis, Technical Manager, Zero Carbon Hub, presented: The Way Forward and explained that for zero carbon targets, opportunities and risks must be adhered to:
- Performance gap – moving to solutions.
- Ventilation – encouraging best practice.
- Overheating – understanding the issues.
Their targets are to reduce energy dependency; affordability; and climate change. Targeted technical review: tasks include: volumetric air flow measurements; air exchange rates using tracer gas; review of commissioning; assessment of air inlet provision – trickle ventilators and cross flow; overall compliance with Part F.
Tassos said: “Parameters and players – planning and design are key. As is streamlining with examples of what can go wrong. Where do problems occur? What problems? One in three homes overheat and retrofits can be costly.
All work should be aesthetically pleasing. The lesson learnt is that we have to deliver; all industry supply chains must work together.”
Peter Halsall, Good Homes Alliance, gave a developers’ perspective: He said: “In the ‘noughties’ there was a ‘Blairite optimism’ and the industry has been catching up ‘pretty quickly’. There are mainly, massive, issues surrounding the skills shortage and the ‘performance gap’. The quality of housing (delivery models) is a big issue. House building was ‘mashed’ by the recession.”
He went on to say that the construction industry suffered ‘harsh circumstances’: 50 / 60 per cent of SMEs went bust. Therefore, new housing delivery models are important. A ‘lasse faire’ attitude isn’t good enough, but there is a great ‘mosaic’ of approaches. The UK is currently building 155,000 new building units a year. But it should be: 240,000. Peter said that this is ‘rather pathetic’. The UK built 1.1m houses between 1968 and 1970.
In essence, there is a massive deficit in new homes being built compromised by the fact that the UK has a home ownership mentality – including custom build and company housing. Austria has 80 per cent custom built.
“Live with it: go with it: use it!” was Peter’s motto. He said that government should push on with energy standards. His view was that everybody aspires to have an energy efficient house. Another issue is that the construction skilled workforce is aging – they will be 55+ in 2020. Ergo – if the UK leaves the EU – the UK can’t get in new workers. ‘Levels dropping like a stone!’ It will push the UK back into ‘mechanised’ building. Then there will be ‘panic’ over housing delivery – which isn’t planned. So investment in new delivery models is key.
Dr Sarah Birchall, Sustainability Engineer, BSRIA, spoke about Innovate UK project – a study to inform a ‘framework’ to integrate supply chain for delivering energy efficient homes.
Sarah explained that the aim is to inform the development of a ‘framework’ that can be applied to the delivery of energy efficient homes with greater attention on operational performance, focusing on the specific requirements of the housebuilding industry. It is Innovate UK funded as part of a 12 month feasibility study which started in November 2015. It is a joint project between BSRIA, Passivhaus Trust, Willmott Dixon, Good Homes Alliance and deploys the use of metrics, KPIs and ‘activities’. It comes under the ‘banner’ as soft landings for residential.
Benefits of Soft Landings: to close the performance gap by: creating project team involvement throughout the project and beyond practical completion; providing for regular reality-checking of assumptions (pitstopping); ensuring the correct operation of the system and its associated building services plant before handover; and providing facilities manager with sufficient training. Sarah said: “It encourages the feedback loop and serves as a ‘digital data catapult’.”
Framework development: what key issues are contributing to the performance gap?; what measures, incentives, drivers are currently in place to address these?; is there a potential to introduce any as a standardised framework to address these issues?; this informs the development of a framework and some success criteria – which could include KPIs and metrics. But how, when and where should the KPIs be measured to judge the success criteria and how will the information needed be captured?
Sarah left the audience with questions around implementation: does it need to be client led?; incentivised?; who will use it?; who will enforce it?; and who will integrate with existing standards? And where does this fit in with the current thinking around building performance, compliance, health and well-being?
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