News analysis with BESA


Bringing buildings to life in a day


It’s going to be a busy day as the BESA National Conference on Thursday, October 20 at the Novotel London West will seek to unpack all the biggest issues and challenges facing the building services sector – in just a few hours.


T


he over-arching theme of the one-day conference is: ‘Bringing buildings to life’ and it will feature a wide range of speakers


considering how the industry can make buildings “fi t for people, fi t for purpose, and fi t for life”. The one- day event, which is sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric, marks a return to an ‘in person’ format after two-years of virtual conferences. Chief executive David Frise said it would demonstrate why sometimes online meeting is not enough and you “have to be in the room to fi nd out what you don’t know you don’t know”.


The Association has also announced that entry to


the event will be free to its members and to clients of all BESA Group companies, including REFCOM, BESCA, SKILLcard, WELPLAN and SFG20. It will also make a £10 donation to the Lighthouse Club charity for every delegate booking. It has been able to make this gesture because


the organising team has already covered the cost of the event thanks to “unprecedented support” from affi liate members, sponsors (including Gold sponsor GPS Air), and exhibitors, along with the high volume of early bookings for its National Awards dinner, which follows the Conference.


Best value


“As a not-for-profi t organisation whose aim is to represent and support our members, we always try to deliver the best possible service at the best value,” said CEO David Frise. “This year we are in the enviable position of having already covered our costs, so we wanted to give something back to our members at a time when they are facing rising costs in almost every other area.” The £10 charitable contribution will be donated to the Light House Club, a leading organisation dedicated to tackling mental health problems in the industry. There are limited places left and it will be fi rst


come fi rst served, so visit https://info.thebesa.com/ besa-national-conference-2022 to view the full programme and register now. The BESA Conference will bring together representatives from across the building


latest thinking of leading fi gures from the worlds of building services engineering, fi nance and the environment, to engage in debate, put your views forward and network,” said Frise. There will be six keynote panel sessions taking


Catherine Noakes


engineering supply chain to consider topics as crucial and diverse as attracting the right range of skills to address building safety, sustainability, and health; rethinking fi re safety; what building engineers will be doing years or even decades in the future; and how the economy will aff ect building engineering fi rms in the coming months and years. Professor Cath Noakes OBE (pictured), Professor


of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds, will deliver the keynote address. She co-chaired the modelling group of the


government’s Scientifi c Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) during the pandemic and will emphasise the importance of addressing ventilation as part of the unprecedented national focus on making buildings safer and healthier. Her talk on ‘Ventilation – the most overlooked building safety issue’ will focus on the opportunity created by the Building Safety Act, which was introduced earlier this year, to bring about the biggest change to health and safety culture in construction for half a century. She will explain why it is vital that the industry does not miss this opportunity to improve the infection resilience of buildings and address the ongoing health crisis caused by poor ventilation. Other high-profi le speakers include Liberal


Democrat peer Lord Redesdale – CEO of the Carbon Management Association; the CBI’s programme director for decarbonisation Tom Thackray; Arup’s director of transformation Gill Kernick; the founder of diversity initiative STEMazing Alexandra Knight; Hoare Lea associate director Frances Brown; and CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year Lucy Sherburn. “The Conference is a great opportunity to hear the


place in the main BESA Theatre to generate animated and informed debate: 1. The Human Building – why a building is like a human body and what that means for its services 2. The Healthy Building – keeping people happy, healthy, and productive 3. The Safe Building – rethinking fi re safety 4. The Skilful Building – creating a more diverse, skilled workforce 5. The Future Building – what will our industry look like in 10, 20 – even 50 years’ time? 6. The Valued Building – the CBI considers how the economy and asset values aff ect our sector The conference will also feature two Technical


Theatres hosting a series of detailed sessions looking at everything from diversity in recruitment and retention to modern methods of measuring and monitoring indoor air quality (IAQ) and the very latest technical guidance. There will be a strong focus on human health


and well-being in buildings with Professor Noakes explaining that the poor standard of building ventilation can be linked to many Covid deaths. “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,” she says. Professor Noakes, who is also deputy director of the Leeds Institute for Fluid Dynamics, says the pandemic taught us “a tremendous amount about the importance of better ventilation to make buildings more infection resilient”. She will focus on the fact that far too many UK buildings are simply under-ventilated despite the clear guidelines and regulatory requirements that have been in place for many years and will outline why the challenge for every building owner and operator is not always to deliver more air, but the


8


October 2022


DOWNLOAD THE HVR APP NOW


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40