NEWS ‘Safe havens’ blueprint guide for indoor air quality T
he Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) has completed its trilogy of free guides designed to help building owners and managers turn their buildings into ‘safe havens’ that protect occupants from health risks linked to airborne contaminants and viruses.
‘Buildings as Safe Havens – a practical guide’ is the third in its suite of guidance for measuring, monitoring, and improving indoor air quality (IAQ) and the second produced with the support of Mitsubishi Electric. The ‘BASH’ Guide offers practical steps that facility managers and building owners can take to measure indoor air quality (IAQ) and offers advice on the questions to ask ventilation experts. The foreword is provided by specialist on infection resilience in buildings, Professor Cath Noakes OBE. She states that poor ventilation is the most overlooked building
safety issue and can be directly linked to high levels of Covid-19 transmission. “Covid-19 has been shown to be transmitted through the air. Even if only 10% of all Covid-19 related deaths in the UK could be directly attributed to the failure to adequately ventilate indoor spaces, that would be more than 15,000 since the start of the pandemic – a shocking statistic that should make everyone sit up and take notice,” she writes in her foreword. “The pandemic has demonstrated that far too many of our buildings are under- ventilated, despite regulatory requirements that have been in place for a number of years. This guide will be an invaluable tool in raising awareness of the importance of good IAQ and making our buildings more infection resilient,” says Noakes, who is Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
Strategies
The guide provides a step-by-step strategy for monitoring and maintaining good IAQ in offices, schools, and public buildings and provides advice and strategies for dealing with ventilation problems. It outlines the questions building managers should ask their ventilation and air quality specialists so they can properly address their IAQ problems, and
provides recommendations for conducting a building review, planning for improvements, and selecting the right technology. The contents of the guide were steered by a technical committee led by Nathan Wood, chair of BESA’s Health and Wellbeing in Buildings group, and the Association’s head of technical Graeme Fox. The guide contains a building review
spreadsheet to help building managers identify areas that require improvement. This is designed on a traffic light system, with actions categorised as red, amber, and green, and works in tandem with an IAQ monitoring spreadsheet.
“Most buildings do not have any active ventilation management,” says Wood. “At the top end of the market, the issue is well understood, and expertise is on hand to put best practice into effect, but our priority now is to find ways of helping the thousands of buildings that have no ventilation strategy and lack the information and expertise to prepare for the next health emergency. “That is why BESA is working hard to raise awareness and provide free guidance that can improve competence and compliance across the ventilation industry.” Hern Yau, Ventilation Product Specialist at Mitsubishi Electric, added that the pandemic had emphasised the importance of ventilating indoor spaces. “This guide will help contribute to a greater understanding of the type of equipment
available, as well as encouraging more productive conversations about what can be achieved in our buildings in the long-term,” he added. “It also reinforces the importance of building managers only working with properly trained and competent IAQ specialists.”
www.theBESA.com/iaq
New analysis measures emissions of transporting pipework W
ith decarbonisation legislation continuing to tighten in the UK, a polymer specialist has carried out a CO2 emissions analysis for contractors to measure emissions accrued from transporting district heating pipework and plumbing pipework to construction sites. REHAU has highlighted these findings, in which emissions can be lowered by up to 67% through informed material choice, in order to raise awareness of the hidden environmental costs of construction, including transportation. Based on data from the CarbonCare emissions calculator and informed by BS EN 16258 standards for environmental management, the analysis approximates the weight of polymer versus traditional materials systems using industry averages. The analysis uses a typical journey from London to Manchester to estimate
transportation emissions in two scenarios and further improve contractor decision- making processes – firstly with polymer versus steel district heating pipes, and then against copper plumbing pipes. As the construction sector is reviewing all its processes to see how best to meet ambitious decarbonisation targets, this material use and its associated carbon emissions is coming under the spotlight, says Steve Richmond, head of marketing and technical at REHAU Building Solutions. “The whole construction industry is in a
process of rapid decarbonisation, and while this is welcome news, there are certain processes that are being overlooked as part of this,” explains Steve. “Material transportation is a great example of a topic that does not get the consideration it deserves, as carbon emissions are often only measured once products are on site.
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Read the latest at:
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BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER MAY 2022 5
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