CIBSE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Audience members were given the distinct impression that these roles had given him an insight into the way that information could sometimes be ‘spun’ with worrying consequences. ‘Personally it has been very frustrating for someone who began life in monitoring buildings to see the prostitution of fact in the interests of spreading confusion.
‘I hope individual members will feel free to mount their own protests, whether to planning authorities or advertisers, or even government press offi ces, because normal engineering cannot survive
without its grassroots
advocates.’ He argued that there was too much lazy language, saving his particular ire for the overuse and misuse of terms such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘low carbon’, adding: ‘If engineering institutions fail to comprehend that good engineering requires tight language, not diffuse ideas, we are in trouble.’ He picked out some of the information communicated about The Shard in London as an example of ‘gobbledegook’ that leaves a ‘margin to bamboozle’. Describing The Shard as a structure that looks
impressive from afar but awful close up (‘but that is all personal opinion’) he said it was less a ‘vertical city’, as some have described it, but more a ‘vertical cul-de-sac’. However, what really concerned him was that the architect had been allowed to assert that The Shard is ‘30% more energy effi cient than a building of its type without saying what type’.
‘What we do affects a third of the energy costs of the economy’
‘My back of fag packet has it twice the consumption of a more normal structure. Developers
naturally want to get their money back. But why should their PR
consultants seem to think they can exaggerate engineering with no risk of comeback?’
In today’s tough world, he said it would be impossible to survive without normal engineering. ‘CIBSE is in one sense a small player, but in an area under much pressure. ‘At the same time, what we do affects something like a third of the energy costs of the economy. We are about better building performance in the most rounded sense. We need to make that clear in how we present ourselves in the role we play.’
DISSEMINATING ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE
Fisk urged building services engineers to maximise the benefi ts of CIBSE’s new Knowledge Portal to tackle those who purvey ‘greenwash’ and spin. Describing the Knowledge Portal as a ‘game-changer’ for the institution, he said it was where CIBSE should launch its fi ght back on behalf of normal engineering. ‘We are no longer the owner of a selective bookshop; we are the purveyor of a knowledge system,’ he said, describing the change as the equivalent to a move from WH Smith selling the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The response to the portal had been fantastic and a credit to the CIBSE team that constructed it, with some 40,000 visits. ‘In a time of mega info, nano know how and zero wisdom, a knowledge system is at a premium,’ he said.
He urged members to help in making the portal as effective as possible. ‘If you hear a media studies graduate say fuel cells run off water, do not fume – send us your piece on fuel cells in services. If you hear someone else talking about energy harvesting of body heat, don’t bury your head – send us a piece on low temperature heat recovery.’
Medium Efficiency Energy Recovery Units Energy Consumption usage/savings Carbon Usage/Savings
15716 kWh
14037 kWh
16.2 Tonnes 14.5 Tonnes
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0
Vs
High Efficiency Energy Recovery Units Energy Consumption usage/savings
Carbon Usage/Savings
5700 kWh
24054 kWh
5.9 Tonnes 24.9 Tonnes
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0
* Based on independent study, for more information please contact
marketing.uk@
flaktwoods.com Pay Back (Years) BENCHMARK Photovoltaics £16,000 Wind Turbine £14,000
Pay Back (Years) BENCHMARK
Ventilation Solutions by Fläkt Woods Limited
Using the e co-Crown makes the equivalent ‘Renewable Savings’
3 Solar Thermal £20,000
18/05/2012 17:37
2.6
4.1
10.0
10.0
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