Industry professionals who are familiar with CIBSE and who read the recently published Building performance reimagined report will undoubtedly think this is not a typical CIBSE publication. Presented by new CIBSE President Fiona Cousins at her inauguration, it does not talk about sizing of systems, maintenance or controls – not even about net zero or embodied carbon.
The aim of the research behind the report was to explore new horizons for CIBSE and its members. To look at building performance in the future, beyond energy and carbon. When we look into the future, we need to explore different scenarios and, as engineers, we are not always comfortable doing that. The report does that for us; it describes various future scenarios and changes, and areas that engineers could influence.
Reading the report, there are some key messages among the beautifully designed images and infographics.
Social, technical, economic and environmental changes are coming our way, to which we need to respond fast. These include climate change and its impacts, digital transformation and AI, the decline of biodiversity, population growth, and scarcity of resources.
Such changes require a shift in our focus and engineering mindset, from energy and carbon to health and resilience. The health of all occupants, human and non-human, and resilience of the built environment – for example, buildings and the infrastructure on which they rely and with which they interact.
The changes also introduce new, complex problems that require more than one set of skills and expertise to solve. Engineers will need to engage with other disciplines to ensure we have a whole built environment approach, including with experts in digital, AI and user experience, ecologists, and social scientists. But even getting the different engineering disciplines working together – from concept to completion and beyond – rather than in the current linear way, would be a step in the right direction.
As well as proposing four performance metrics to address the challenges of the future and the focus shift to health and resilience (see panel on 21), the report highlights the changing role of building services engineers. They are no longer just responsible for the basic function and energy use of a building, but also for the wellbeing of occupants (air quality, acoustics, thermal comfort, light, mental health and stimulation), the increase or maintaining of biodiversity, and the encouragement of social equity and diversity.
Furthermore, the responsibilities of building services engineers expand beyond buildings, to neighbourhoods and cities – influencing how buildings connect to the local and city infrastructure, as well as interface with people, businesses and biodiversity, and the use of local resources.
As an industry, we need to develop a language of common values that represent the performance metrics highlighted in the report, to better communicate with the clients and enable them to make the right decisions that extend beyond costs and regulatory compliance.
Building services engineers have the variety of skills and expertise, and the remit, to influence built environment performance and lead the industry in adopting more holistic performance metrics and values. What we now need, as engineers, is to ask the right questions and be curious about all aspects of the building, its life and its occupants.
About the author
Dr Anastasia Mylona is technical director at CIBSE