News analysis with BESA


Ventilation is the most overlooked building safety issue


BESA has produced a suite of guidance designed to help building services fi rms and their clients tackle serious health problems caused by poorly ventilated buildings.


T


urning buildings into ‘safe havens’ that keep people safe, healthy and productive has been the motivation behind the work done over


the past year by the BESA Health & Well-being in Buildings (HWB) group and has led to the production of three free guides. In her foreword to the latest, which was launched this month: ‘Buildings as Safe Havens – a practical guide’, Professor Cath Noakes OBE (pictured above) says ventilation is “the most overlooked building safety issue”. The unprecedented attention now being paid to building safety following the Grenfell Tower tragedy focuses, quite rightly, on fi re risk, but in truth, it is likely that the poor standard of building ventilation can be linked to many more deaths, she believes. “Covid-19 has been shown to be transmitted


through the air. Even if only 10% of all Covid-19 related deaths 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,” says Professor Noakes, who is Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds.


Disease


Her work as part of the government’s Scientifi c Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) during the Covid-19 pandemic has been widely applauded for helping to improve understanding of how better building ventilation reduces the spread of disease in indoor spaces. She says the most signifi cant fi nding made by


SAGE’s Environment and Modelling Group, which she co-chaired, was that far too many of UK buildings are simply under-ventilated despite clear guidelines and regulatory requirements. “The recommended ventilation rate of 10 litres


per person per second of clean air is likely to be very eff ective for protecting health and well-being, but many buildings fail to achieve this level,” says Professor Noakes.


Most buildings do not have any active ventilation


management. At the top end of the market, the issue is well understood, and expertise is on hand to put best practice into eff ect, but BESA believes we must urgently fi nd 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 the HWB group chaired by Nathan


Wood has been working hard to raise awareness and provide free guidance to help improve competence and compliance across the ventilation industry – and broaden the pool of ventilation expertise to take on this massive task. BESA’s trio of indoor air quality (IAQ) guides are


an invaluable part of a wider strategy to develop a larger and more competent specialist workforce able to take the lessons we have learned about how ventilation can make buildings more infection resilient and turn them into practical measures. BESA’s Beginner’s Guide to IAQ provided an


overview of the problem and its Guide to Good Practice for IAQ focused on the importance of


measuring and monitoring to delivering better health and well-being outcomes. The fi rst was developed in partnership with Mitsubishi Electric and has been downloaded for free more than 2,000 times. Now with the launch of Buildings as Safe Havens


– a practical guide to solutions, the group (also in partnership with Mitsubishi Electric), is providing a step-by-step approach to getting the most from working with IAQ specialists, so facilities managers and end users can achieve the best results. It explains the options available for diff erent building types and will help specifi ers avoid ‘snake oil’ marketeers off ering miracle cures for IAQ problems because it is more important than ever that only suitably qualifi ed practitioners and proven solutions are used to tackle this critical safety issue. Recommended actions include carrying out a


review in partnership with a ventilation or IAQ specialist to assess the main factors aff ecting air quality. This will help identify the methods and equipment that will be most suitable for the building


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April 2022


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