INDUSTRY OPINION


years


Glycol Experts since 1998


in terms of its contribution to society.


“Is it about places that the community can gather at?” she asked. “Is it about buildings that face outwards and improve security on the street rather than inwards. Is it about buildings that have diff erent purposes at diff erent times of the day?


“If you can bake those things in at the…very beginning of design and say,


actually, this project will be successful if it's more than just on time and on budget, then those things begin to permeate all the way through. Then it becomes much more diffi cult to unravel some of the individual pieces,” added Cousins.


She also believes that improving our understanding of how buildings


operate and ensuring systems are more integrated will also help the industry move away from its low-cost culture. “Value engineering works by attacking the line items that look like they're costing more than they otherwise might,” she told the BESA podcast. “If everything is…integrated, that the reason you've got a heat pump is because you want to have a fully electric building, because actually you want to be zero net carbon over a period of time [then] you've got a very diff erent set of criteria, you're not going to suddenly say, well, the heat pump is more expensive than the chiller would have been.” This also drives a diff erent approach to skills, according to Cousins, because


you are looking for people with a “more conceptual understanding” of how buildings work including their thermal responses which can help address wider problems like overheating.


Optimised “There's been a tendency to emphasise the skills that are to do with keeping a


piece of machinery running as opposed to keeping the whole of the building running and optimised,” she said. In her inaugural address as CIBSE President, Cousins, who is also an Arup


Fellow and previously served as deputy chair of Arup’s digital executive, called for building performance to be “reimagined” so that the full potential of building services engineers to address social issues like health, wellbeing and productivity could be realised. During the podcast, she encouraged BESA and CIBSE to collaborate on


several issues and activities, including improving the public’s understanding of how building services engineering improves their lives. “We do need people to understand a little bit more about what it is that enables them to live their best lives while they're sitting in buildings,” she told Frise. “More value needs to be attached to good buildings, things that keep you comfortable. Things that provide the environment for you to do the thing that you want to do. Things that mitigate climate change. Things that allow you to be healthy and well. “All those things are in the remit of building services engineers and


contractors. Is the building properly ventilated? Is that ventilation safe? Is it comfortable? [These] are things that we should value, but we've spent an awful lot of our time in the past trying to make them disappear.”


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www.acr-news.com • December 2024 15 Manufactured in U.K


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