CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION THE ISSUES
could be used is schools, where it could be used specifically as a BIM object. ‘It’s already happening in operating theatres – it could happen to whole buildings,’ enthused Morrell. Radical thinking, said Morrell, is, in part,
the answer: ‘Some 100,000 people are living in substandard accommodation. If we had had a war, we would be having an emergency response to it. Economically, I think we are in a similar place. ‘When we responded in an emergency we
were damn good. I’m advocating that kind of thinking as an answer to our problem.’ But one delegate questioned the UK’s
ability to become an exporting nation if countries such as China continue to ‘rip off’ Britain’s best innovations.
Catching the cowboys
A heartfelt plea from a delegate provided a stark reminder of the threat that could be posed by ‘cowboy builders’ trying to exploit the Green Deal. She challenged those responsible for rolling out the Green Deal to make sure elderly and vulnerable people are not exploited by unscrupulous builders. ‘Alarm bells are ringing in my head,’ she said. ‘What protection have you got for these people, because I guarantee they will be targeted.’ Speakers at the session acknowledged there would be some ‘cowboys’, but Charles Phillips, deputy director for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said that in such instances the buck should stop with the Green Deal providers. ‘They must make sure the consumer is not ripped off,’ he said, pointing out that there would also be a regulatory body to oversee the Green Deal.
Earlier Trewin Restorick, chief executive of Global Action Plan, had warned about the
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tensions resulting from the economic model for the Green Deal. The only way to pay for Green Deal assessors was for them to make a profit from their work, which might mean that an assessor would ‘turn up at your door and sell you something that’s not right for your house’. He said there were concerns about the robustness of the Green Deal compared with the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), which is due to start in 2013.
Reflecting on the slow roll-out of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), Neil Turner, business development manager at Renewable Energy Systems, criticised the government’s silence on the issue. ‘I have not seen a single politician standing up and saying, ‘This (RHI) is good”. I would love that to happen.’ Problems around the introduction of feed-in tariffs had caused knock-on damage to this and many other carbon-cutting energy schemes, he added.
Collaborating across the procurement chain Asked what the industry is ignoring or needs to take more account of, Morrell accused parts of the sector of having a ‘determination to keep design and construction separate’. Robin Nicholson CBE, senior partner at
Edward Cullinan Architects, said collaboration is hindered by clients, such as house builders, who refuse to appoint services engineers, even though they are an essential part of a design team. ‘We’ve been trying to get the industry to collaborate for years,’ he added. But, according to Paul Wendon, technical
director of TROX UK, manufacturers want to collaborate, but they are obstructed. He said: ‘We don’t get involved generally because the tradition is the building services industry will not specify a unique provider of a product. ‘We can be more involved early in the
process to advise and understand the interaction between the product and how it’s being used and costed.’
November 2012 CIBSE Journal 17
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