50 INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER


PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES With Parts F and O relating to ventilation and overheating respectively, rather than regulating the actual building fabric itself, we wondered whether housebuilders were ‘insourcing’ the planning and design of their builds to comply with these uplifted, and, in the case of Part O, brand new standards. As might be expected, most of our respondents were outsourcing the decisions that would ensure that adequate ventilation was provided to dwellings in order to comply with Part F, to their architect (44%). However, perhaps surprisingly, 21% were dealing with this inhouse (plus 12% choosing ‘builder’), and only 9% were leaving compliance on ventilation to an M&E engineer, and 8% to a subcontractor.


BUILDING DESIGN CHANGES Many housebuilders are grappling with a seemingly intractable


problem in complying with Part L, which requires an increase in airtihtness and fabric effi ciency, and also eetin art , which won’t allow excessive levels of overheating of a dwelling. In some cases this has led design teams to have to confront clients with plans for smaller windows than they would be prepared to accept, to mitigate overheating. We asked our survey sample how challenging it has been so far to retain their existing building design (in terms of the aesthetic look of the external facade), while at the same time complying with Part O as well as Part L? The answers showed that this was a problem even for smaller builders, who made up the majority of our survey. In total, 74% said it was challenging to some degree, and 21% admitted it was ‘very challenging,’ which means this is a major problem to solve in coming months if homes and apartment buildings are not to look dramatically different in coming years.


How challenging is retaining your existing window sizes and overall design look, in meeting Part O on overheating while meeting Part L?


CONCLUSION T


here remain a host of issues to address in order to ensure that the new Part L is practical to achieve for the broadest rane of housebuilders, with con icts eistin between the regulation’s aims of air-tight construction, and both ventilation and overheating concerns. Virtually all of the barriers cited in our 2022 Industry


iewfi nder survey had becoe ore acute in this years study, from skills, to costs, to homeowner awareness. The only factor that was unchanged was carbon reduction measurements. Part L has been a legal requirement for all developments for a year and a half, and alongside Parts F and the new Part O, represents one of the biggest jumps in quality for


housebuilding in many years, driven by the UK’s general, but urgent, need to cut carbon.


Our survey shows that while the new standards may be achievable without many housebuilders having to make drastic chanes or invest inordinate sus, its a diffi cult task to introduce much higher levels of insulation, fabric design rigour, and renewables to existing designs. For SME builders, virtually everything is a challenge currently, and this is just another one. Moreover, the jump in build performance, new tech and change of housebuilding approaches generally that will be needed to meet the Future Homes Standard (75-80% fewer emissions) in just over a year’s time, is going to be a huge leap.


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