The construction industry is directly and indirectly responsible for about half the total UK emissions of CO₂, 90% of all surface mineral extraction and over a quarter of all waste sent to landfill. These figures include new and existing buildings but they hide two important facts: the UK building stock is only replaced at the rate of about 1% a year and new buildings are more energy and resource efficient than older ones.

This means that well over 99% of the environmental damage attributable to construction rests with existing buildings. This project aims to identify the main sources of environmental impacts from buildings and to identify and cost sustainable methods of reducing these impacts. The programme will concentrate on commercial buildings, since the environmental impacts of domestic buildings are already the subject of other government initiatives.

Many non-domestic buildings are hugely inefficient and wasteful of increasingly valuable resources. However, compared for example to the energy costs of the industrial production processes undertaken within them, the costs of running even an inefficient building are typically small and can often be overlooked. As sustainability auditors working in both the industrial and construction sectors, Wren & Bell frequently encounter examples of such waste and find ways to address them. The aim of this project is to work with a number of commercial partners to build up a best practice guide, which will aim to address all the common sustainability issues found in non-domestic buildings and to provide a range of solutions.

Major Output

The main output from the programme will be a best practice guide to improving the sustainability of existing commercial buildings. This will be published in paper and electronic formats as standard but will also be presented in a user-friendly interactive format, available both on CD-ROM and on this website.

The layout of this site will obviously develop with the project but we envisage an interactive database and calculation engine that will allow users to enter details such as building type, floor area, fuel bills etc., then return recommendations for improvement actions with estimated costs and payback periods. This will be based on an assessment of the economic viability, energy efficiency and sustainability of three major commercial sites throughout the UK and on an integrated site assessment protocol developed over the course of this project.

The guide will be structured to encourage commercial property owners and facilities managers to assess the issues affecting their operations and to present a measured case to address them. The project team aims to construct a user-friendly site assessment protocol which will link into a database of tried and tested refurbishment schemes, allowing facilities managers with a wide range of skills and experience to take significant steps toward reducing their impact on the environment. As well as publishing this system in traditional paper-based format, an electronic version and an interactive application will be developed to encourage its widespread use.

From each guide issued and each "hit" on the web site, a database of guide users would be built up. These would be contacted with a follow-up questionnaire to establish the effectiveness of the programme in terms of robust indicators such as CO₂ and expenditure saved, investment and payback. The results of this research would then also be returned to all participants, as well as being posted on the web site and publicised in appropriate journals etc.

Appropriateness

Wren & Bell have established links with Agilent Technologies (AT), which has a well-earned reputation for its commitment to sustainability. AT has major construction and administration facility in South Queensferry, just outside Edinburgh and at Bristol and Ipswich. These will be used as the main model for this study. This facility includes a large number of buildings of varying ages and uses, which represent a model in miniature of commercial buildings found across the country. This facility would be used for the core element of the programme. All these sites have undergone a rolling programme of refurbishment and development over a period of more than thirty years. During these programmes, detailed records have been kept of expenditure on fuel, electricity, water etc. and the effect of each refurbishment scheme on these figures.

We propose to survey and audit the company’s facilities with a view to drawing up practical costed solutions to improve the sustainability of the buildings. In addition, the findings of this stage of the research will then be used to improve the sustainable design of a new building, which is proposed for the site. In this way, we aim to use an integrated approach to address the environmental issues associated with both existing and new-build industrial premises. The location of a number of diverse commercial buildings in one place provides an excellent opportunity to compare the performance of these buildings without having to control for variations in weather or working practices.

Following a number of preliminary meetings, AT have expressed a wish to demonstrate their commitment to the promotion of sustainability by encouraging a wider appraisal of additional facilities and dissemination of the information gathered to a wider audience. Clearly, to undertake this programme in sufficient depth so that it could be published in this way will require a greater commitment in terms of research, modelling and compilation of results, as well as development of the paper, electronic and interactive reports.

AT are keen to support the cause of improving sustainability and have committed the major part of the partners contribution to the project; they have also given permission for their facilities management information to be used as the basis for the programme and for it to be published. With permission from the company to disclose sensitive information about their operations and PII funding from the DETR, the project team will be able to use this valuable data resource to create a useful tool for the reduction of environmental impacts from commercial facilities.

The long established record of refurbishment activity at the company provides a broad basis on which to build this programme. However, it does also mean that some of the information is many years old and may not be relevant to modern programmes using today’s priorities and equipment. We have therefore included an assessment of the current refurbishment programme as well as an assessment of how the procedures and findings of the project can be applied to a new-build development. Using the systems and procedures developed during the course of the project in this way will ensure that they are directly relevant to modern refurbishment and building practice.

The wide variety of facilities available to the study across these three large sites provides an excellent opportunity to gather facilities management and refurbishment information for a range of different building and usage types. Coupled with this, the archive information on management and refurbishment of the facilities collected by the company over many years at these sites is an excellent resource from which to build a database of sustainable refurbishment. In effect, this opportunity can only be fully exploited by using this combination of data and funding to create a resource which will be widely, effectively and measurably used to improve the sustainability of commercial facilities throughout the UK.

Objectives

The overall objective of the programme is to effect the maximum improvement in the sustainability of commercial facilities in the United Kingdom. Within this objective, we have also built in a mechanism to measure the effectiveness of the programme and to provide a basis for any follow-up work.

The project team has established access to a major source of historical information on refurbishment programmes and facilities management across a wide range of building types. This will ensure that the results of the programme will be applicable to the broadest range of facilities, which will help to maximise its effect. At an early stage of the programme, an agreed set of parameters will be established, which can be used to compare the sustainability of various buildings and refurbishment schemes. Some examples of these parameters are given in the "Impacts" section of this proposal but in brief, they will be designed to apply to all building types and refurbishment options and to refer directly to the Government’s own priorities for reducing environmental impacts, such as CO₂ emissions, resource depletion, CFCs, VOCs, persistent toxic materials etc.

The project aims to provide a range of potential users, including facilities managers, architects, design engineers and others, with a useful tool to establish the current sustainability of their facilities, compare it with national average and good practice equivalents and then take effective and economical steps to improve it. This tool will be presented in a number of formats: as a traditional paper bound best practice guide, as a wen site and electronic document and as an interactive application.

 

Although the resulting tool will be based on a large and complex data set, our intention is to make using it as simple as possible, so that people with no facilities management experience will still be able to improve the performance of their buildings and make informed judgements about the most sustainable options open to them. The team will be able to draw on the technical capabilities and software development expertise of Agilent Technologies to assist with development of the proposed interactive application, using the results and systems developed in this programme to build a user-friendly tool for the reduction of environmental impacts from commercial facilities.

 

As well as providing a wide range of formats, we propose to maintain a database of users of this system, so that the effectiveness of the programme can be tracked and measured. This database will also allow us to keep in touch with users of the tools to provide additional information and upgrades and to assess the improvements in sustainability attributable to this programme. This will provide DETR with the necessary information to demonstrate that the PII funding programme is effectively targeted.