IES was formed in June 1994 by Dr Don McLean who is the current Managing Director. The roots of IES go back to 1979 when the 1973 energy crisis, the three-day week, power cuts and predictions that oil would run out by 2000 were all high in the public’s consciousness.
Against this backdrop, Don McLean started his PhD work in detailed computer simulation of renewable energy devices. This work, along with subsequent research and commercial activity consolidated three fundamental observations that IES is built on:
- Buildings are major consumers of energy and they have to be made more efficient to cut CO2 emissions, conserve fossil fuels and preserve the environment for future generations.
- Buildings are generally designed on experience and simplistic performance calculations even though it has been proven that the use of performance based building simulation can achieve much better performing buildings that consume significantly less energy.
- Pre-IES building performance tools were too complex to use and remained in the hands of academics making very little impact on mainstream commercial design.
IES has been successful in bringing to market the <Virtual Environment> suite of integrated building performance analysis tools, with the first major commercial version 3.0 hitting the market in the late 1990’s.
Since then, sustainability, climate change and global warming have become major concerns for the general public and Governments’ alike. There is a constantly expanding list of global building CO2 reduction / zero-carbon targets, regulations and voluntary codes.
Regions such as the European Union, Australia and California – that represent almost a quarter of the worlds’ GDP – already require performance assessment to comply with building regulations. While countries that represent more than half of the worlds’ GDP like the USA, India, China, South Africa and the Middle East, have or are adopting voluntary building rating systems such as LEED, BREEAM and Green Star, which also require performance assessment.
IES has and will continue to expand the capabilities of its <VE> software suite to offer an analysis toolset that is easily accessible to all and can be easily used within the commercial design workflow throughout the whole design process; from master planning, to concept, completion and operation.
We see performance analysis as having a major role to play in the design of green, high-performance buildings, and in the bridging of the 'information' gulf between architects and engineers.
