Trial / Demo
While the ongoing Covid-19 crisis has definitely distracted from climate commitments and net zero carbon building goals, it’s also highlighted the scale of changes needed to make real impacts, and the ever shortening timescales we have to meet these commitments.
One thing that has become clear is that even shutting down the economy does not deliver the reductions we need, and that all our effort needs to go into how a ‘green recovery’ can go beyond current building regulations and create an economy that is truly low energy and zero carbon.
Needless to say, the built environment has a significant role to play in this need to build back better. And against the back-drop of digitization, this means it’s a very exciting and innovative time to be working in the industry.
While true zero carbon building regulations don’t exist, many mandates to reach zero carbon do, and it is only through more rigorous performance modelling and design that we can take the steps needed to deliver net zero carbon buildings.
So why look at performance modelling in particular? There has been a growing industry voice in recent year’s extolling the virtues of a performance-based approach in helping us achieve zero carbon building aspirations: the Design for Performance initiative, CIBSE TM54/TM63, energy modelling requirements in LEED/BREEAM, and compliance modelling requirements in local building regulations.
However, even though performance modelling is strongly advised and even mandated in these contexts, it’s often only paid lip service. Time is spent creating models that have only one single purpose – building regulation or certification compliance – and then these models are mothballed and the value contained within them lost.
Continuing to replicate this approach will not significantly help us achieve zero carbon. If we can reduce the waste of these performance models, and make effective use of the multiple opportunities to reuse and recycle them, then we can apply the informed knowledge they provide to improve performance and reach net zero not only at design but across the whole life of the building.
IES is running a series of upskilling sessions, designed to help VE performance modellers maximize the value they get from the time invested in model creation, and in doing so change the industry approach to performance modelling.
By passing on our 26 years plus of internal expertise in this area, the sessions will cover how to effectively create well-built and robust models from the start, reduce the time spent creating them, and cover the opportunities and practicalities for reusing and repurposing them elsewhere. Sessions planned include:
Together, let us change how performance modelling is viewed and update outdated procedures that are entrenched in the industry – now is the time to take action – with continued digitization taking place in all aspects of construction and with the pressing need to meet net zero carbon building commitments.
First off, you need to make sure that you start with a well-built and robust model. However, model creation is often perceived as a low-level task, and given far less importance than it really deserves. Sub-contracting out the geometry build of a project to low cost sources is a business model used worldwide. Unfortunately, this often results in models with significant flaws, which then impacts upon the ability of the model to give accurate answers to the questions being asked of it.
There are stringent zoning requirements within many calculation methodologies (NCM, ASHRAE 90.1 etc.), because, correctly zoning your model will improve the results it gives. Dave’s top tips covered zoning earlier this year, while our related Lunch-N-Learn session on zoning techniques also gives good background.
Follow IES on social to get updates on future upcoming sessions.
