News News in brief
Arup confirms job cuts Arup has made 280 staff redundant and shed 230 temporary and agency posts. In addtion, around 80 vacant posts will not be filled. The engineering and design company, which blames economic conditions for the cuts, has also been able to find positions for a few affected staff in its overseas operations.
RIBA takes on design review The Royal Institute of British Architects is reported to have approached Housing Minister Grant Shapps to request that it take control of design reviews, which are currently under the remit of architecture quango Cabe. No one at RIBA was available for comment.
Call for industry papers CIBSE is inviting individuals to send in abstracts of papers for possible presentation at a ‘Knowledge Forum’ event being held later this year. CIBSE says the event will be an opportunity for the research and development community to showcase their work to industry. Visit
www.cibse. org or email
nhughes@cibse.org
Correction: wind turbines In the ‘Wind turbines’ feature in January CIBSE Journal, the captions for the individual turbines pictured on pages 39 and 43 were the wrong round – the caption for p39 should have been on p43, and vice versa. We apologise for the error.
Task group seeks reform of energy certificates
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A new task group has been launched by the UK Green
Building Council to investigate ways to encourage non-domestic building owners and occupiers to reduce carbon emissions using Display Energy Certificates (DEC). The group will look at issues
such as merging DECs with Energy Performance Certificates, the legal implications of the new certificates, dealing with multi- tenanted commercial buildings and addressing ‘separables’, which are parts of buildings with large energy uses, such as regional server rooms. Paul King, chief executive of the
UK Green Building Council said: ‘Government policy in the non- domestic buildings sector needs urgently sorting out. We’ve got
Non-domestic building owners need ‘encouragement’ to cut energy use
Energy Performance Certificates that haven’t really taken off and we’ve got Display Energy Certificates that only apply to some buildings. ‘Businesses are also trying to
get their heads around the Carbon Reduction Commitment following a moving of the goalposts in the
Comprehensive Spending Review. ‘We think government could
simplify regulations to both reduce the burden on business and achieve greater carbon reductions, cost effectively.’ Currently, only public buildings
with floor space of more than 1,000 sq m need to have a DEC. The certificates are based on the actual energy usage of a building, showing scores of A to G, with A being the most efficient and G the least. The task group, which is sponsored by British Land, will consist of around 30 different UK- GBC members, including some of the industry’s largest companies, such as Balfour Beatty, Sainsbury’s and Aviva. It will make detailed recommendations in March.
Call for mandatory aircon inspections
CIBSE has called for the mandatory lodgement of air conditioning inspections as part of its ongoing compliance campaign. The lower threshold for air- conditioning inspections, which includes all systems with an output of 12KW or more, came into effect from 4 January 2011. This means that most air-conditioned spaces of more than 2,000 square feet should now have an air-conditioning certificate. ‘With the recent changes in the threshold, a lot more buildings now
require an inspection,’ said Hywel Davies, CIBSE’s technical director. ‘CIBSE believes it is the ideal
time to introduce the mandatory lodgement of air conditioning inspections to help monitor compliance. It will enable us to build up a national picture of air conditioning installations.’ The government has announced
that it will move ahead with proposals to make it mandatory to lodge air conditioning reports following an industry-wide consultation, but the timescales are still to be determined.
Under the European Performance
of Buildings Directive, air conditioning inspections have the lowest compliance rates, currently thought to be below 5%. The purpose of air conditioning inspections is to provide owners and operators with information on the performance of their air conditioning so that they can improve them and cut costs if they are using too much energy. Mandatory lodgement will provide a central register enabling much better information on air conditioning installations to be logged, says CIBSE.
First Gold for London
The new UK headquarters for Westpac Banking has been awarded the first Gold Ska Rating for a building in the City of London. Co- ordinated by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Ska Rating is an assessment process to help organisations achieve more sustainable fit-outs. AECOM assessed and accredited the fit-out. Ska assessor Richard Hollis, said: ‘The project’s success lay in the client’s prioritisation of sustainability as the main objective for the design team. It made a real difference to the final score of the development.’
10
CIBSE Journal February 2011
www.cibsejournal.com
David Churchill
Shutterstock
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