Elemental

Firstly, is anyone still struggling along with the Access version of iSBEM?  Or is everyone using either Hevacomp, IES or TAS? Let me know in the comments.

If you haven’t had a tinker with iSBEM yet, there is a new version out now, although some problems have been identified running it on Acess 2000.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet – has anyone else reviewed it yet? 

And did anyone go to CIBSE and blog it?  If you went and want to write a guest post here, drop me an email and we’ll sort something out.

mel starrs Uncategorized Part L, Software

The CSE (Centre for Sustainable Energy) have quite a few new documents on wind power available at their website here.

Delivering Community Benefits from Wind Energy Development: A Toolkit looks a useful tool (pdf, 46 pages).

mel starrs Uncategorized Centre for Sustainable Energy, Sustainability

Joining in on the carbon offset debate, CSE (Centre for Sustainable Energy) have made their position clear:

“Carbon offsetting has no part to play in an effective strategy to reduce carbon emissions in the UK.”

This is in response to the government’s current consultation on creating a more transparent carbon offsetting industry.  CSE’s full response can be found here (pdf, 5 pages).

The key message is that they don’t want the carbon offsetting to lull everyone into a false sense of security.  It’s interesting watching CNN (I’m currently travelling and the only english speaking TV is CNN in hotel rooms) painting a very rosy picture where technology will save us all.  This type of message, CSE believes, is damaging. 

Personally, I believe neither doom and gloom nor rosy reporting are ideal.  Striking the balance between the two camps is key and something I’ll be pondering on a while longer.

mel starrs Uncategorized carbon, Centre for Sustainable Energy, CNN, Sustainability, United Kingdom

Strange things going on in the industry. I note that CIBSE can now count EC Harris as members. EC Harris would generally be seen as allies of building services engineers, being primarily project managers, quantity surveyors and land development experts. It’s a trend I see more and more. At the larger end of the market, companies are tending to try to offer all things to everyone, rather than ’stick to the knitting’. However, at the other end of the market, it is increasingly becoming fragmented, with lots of tiny breakoffs, usually one or two employees, who specialise highly.  The middle of the market is starting to look a little odd too, with companies such as ESD and XCO2 diversifying into carbon credits and wind turbines.

Whilst all this diversification is a great way to mitigate against the peaks and troughs endemic in the industry, the consequences of all this toe-stepping could find those who were traditionally allies competing for the same crumbs should another recession ever hit.  Is this a good or bad thing for the industry?

mel starrs Uncategorized Construction Industry, ESD, Management, XCO2

Following on from the Think conference on 3 May 2007, CABE have issued details of their various footprints.  Good to see the old standard ecological footprint making an appearance again – carbon footprints had eclipsed them for a while then:

CABE’s carbon footprint is 503 tonnes a year, or 4.6 tonnes per person. CABE’s ecological footprint, measuring impacts on other people as well as on the planet, totals 227 global hectares a year, or 2.3 global hectares per person. A sustainable ‘earthshare’ is much lower, at between 1.7 and 1.8 hectares.

The full report is available as a pdf here (32 pages).

mel starrs Uncategorized carbon, Sustainability

From the British Expertise website:

British Expertise, working with RICS, RIBA, APM and others, is running a Sustainability conference in London on Tuesday, 15 May 2007. Sustainability is increasing seen as the main driver in development and planning initiatives and is emerging as a fundamental principle to create a new kind of built environment: one that meets the needs of users in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Despite this simple definition, however, there are many different views on what exactly sustainability means for buildings. This multi-institutional open forum and conference will address this and set the scene for development of our own sustainability working group by publication of a feedback document.  

The cost to attend this event is just £75 + VAT per person – although numbers are very limited

If anyone gets a chance to go, I’d love to see some feedback on the event – drop me a comment or email.

mel starrs Uncategorized GBP, Knowledge, London, Sustainability

A useful guide (pdf, 20 pages) from the Business Resource Efficiency & Waste Programme (BREW) in the Northwest

England’s Northwest is a leader in supporting businesses, organisations and individuals to reduce their impact on climate change and improve overall environmental performance within organisations.

This booklet will give you the contacts and tools to enable you to access the support that you need to rise to the challenge, help the planet and save your organisation money.

via:: NWDA 

Funded by DEFRA, with partners Envirolink Nortwest, Environment Agency, Carbon Trust, Envirowise, Enworks, NISP, and WRAP, it’s a useful little guide, aimed I think at SME’s.  Pulls together lots of links and contacts.

mel starrs Uncategorized Carbon Trust, Environment Agency, Northwest, Sustainability, United Kingdom

No longer do you need to rely on a central marketing department to scan the OJEU (Official Journal of the European Union) for you – you can have it delivered to your inbox via RSS .  Tenders Electronic Daily (or TED) is available in 23 languages.  Feeds include Construction and Real Estate.

If you haven’t yet embraced RSS (why not?) don’t forget feedblitz can turn any RSS feed into an email, delievered to your inbox.  Just pop the feed url in the big orange box at the bottom of the front page and follow the instructions.

mel starrs Uncategorized Built Environment, European Union, Knowledge, Productivity, Projects, Resources

Looks like Matt Grace has moved to Enermodal Engineering (a Canadian company) in Calgary:

Leading UK Sustainability Expert Joins Enermodal Calgary: Matt Grace, B.Eng., M.Sc., C.Env.

Matt Grace brings to Enermodal 12 years of professional experience in sustainable building design and assessment, including work on office, institutional, industrial and housing developments, renewable energy and energy efficiency. He has conducted over 150 assessments of green buildings, developed BREEAM (the UK equivalent to LEED), and conducted building research for the International Energy Agency. Matt’s education includes degrees in both Engineering and Energy and the Environment, and he is a Chartered Environmentalist (UK). We look forward to the fresh perspective on green building design and rating that Matt brings to Enermodal.

Matt was last seen at Ferguson Brown, whose website is still under development some 8 months after I first reported it ‘coming soon’.  The Calgary office of Enermodal opened in November from what I can gather.

Good luck in Canada, Matt…

mel starrs Uncategorized Calgary, Canada, Energy Agency, energy efficiency, Enermodal Engineering, Ferguson Brown, Matt Grace, News, renewable energy, United Kingdom

A new one on me – BEEP stands for BOMA Energy Efficiency Program (and BOMA stands for Building Owners and Managers Association). Not content with all these acronyms, they also have a scheme called the GREEN (Green Resource Energy and Environment Network).

Stateside FM focussed, there could be some useful resources here come the advent of EPC’s for public building here in the UK. For Earth Day (again this seemed to be mainly a stateside celebration on 22 April) they released a Top 10 Energy Efficient Strategies (some US bias and mainly common sense):

1. Check that Equipment Is Functioning as Designed
Regularly inspect all equipment and controls to ensure they are functioning as designed.
Double-check Energy Management System (EMS) programming to make sure that operations are optimized. One firm corrected an EMS software programming error from “And” to “Or” and saved $3,700 annually.

2. Consider Your Cleaning Options
Team Cleaning-Janitors go through the building as a team floor by floor, and the lighting is turned on/off as they progress through the building.
Occupancy Sensors-Install motion sensors that will turn lights on when janitors are cleaning and automatically turn them off when the floor is vacant.
Coordinate-Have janitors coordinate with the security crew to walk through the building and turn off equipment that was inadvertently left on by tenants.
Day Cleaning-Why not have the janitors clean during the day while the lights are already on?

3. Encourage Tenants to Turn Off Equipment
During off hours, make sure to power down everything – such as copiers, kitchen equipment and task lights. Use cleaning/security personnel to turn off miscellaneous items such as coffee pots, kitchen equipment and individual office lights.

4. Use High Efficiency LED Exit Signs
Replace inefficient exits signs with high efficiency LED exit signs. LED exit signs operate 24/7 and have lower maintenance costs due to their extended life.

5. Institute an Energy Awareness Program
Create promotional items, post posters, write news releases-tell everyone about your commitment to energy savings. Use your company newsletter and company/building announcements to keep tenants informed about your energy savings goals and how they can both help and benefit.

6. Install Monitor Power Management Software
In U.S. companies alone, more than $1 billion a year is wasted on electricity for computer monitors that are left on when they shouldn’t be. Avoid those wastes by installing power management software for computer monitors and CPU/Hard Drives.

7. Change Incandescents to CFL and HID
CFL lights use less energy, have a longer lamp life, and produce less heat, thereby reducing heat load. Also, check the lighting in restrooms, closets, server rooms and some common areas. Thanks to the 2005 Energy Bill, lighting retrofits and upgrades that meet energy efficiency requirements may be tax deductible, up to $.60 psf.

8. Harvest Daylight
Locate workstations requiring high illumination adjacent to windows.

9. Evaluate After Hours Usage
Talk to the tenants to learn if they are actually using their space during the lease-required operating hours. Adjust building operating hours to reflect actual tenant usage.

10. Adjust Ventilation
Reduce exhaust and outdoor-air ventilation rates within codes. Take a look at the fans and adjust ventilation in unoccupied and low-density areas to reduce the ventilation to a practical, yet comfortable level.

mel starrs Uncategorized Building Owners and Managers Association, Earth Day, electricity, energy savings, energy savings goals, Green Building, Install Monitor Power Management Software, kitchen equipment, less energy, meet energy efficiency requirements, power management software, Resources, software programming error, United Kingdom, United States, USD