Pushing the envelope

When building envelope design, construction and testing company Building Sciences was formed in 1986, the prevailing question was ‘why?’ Its founder, Doug Lawson an idealistic Briton who’d been inspired by a stint working with a particularly energy conscious Canadian construction firm, was certain that a company capable of shoring up the leaky skeletal structure of the UK’s built environment would be worthwhile. The initial market indifference he faced suggested otherwise.

“When the company was started nobody wanted to listen to us, not even the Building Research Establishment, because building envelope design just wasn’t seen as relevant in those days, so it was very tough for a long time,” explains Building Sciences Managing Director and erstwhile architect Stuart Borland, who took over the reigns of the company when Lawson retired in 1999.

Fast-forward to 2009, and Building Sciences, has emerged as one of the most respected and capable companies of its kind at a time when the UK Government is trumpeting a “green revolution” and attempting to arouse the nation from its dormancy at the foot of Europe’s energy efficiency league table. Today, the nimble 20-person company, boasts some of the most experienced and qualified staff in the industry, and an impressive client list featuring names such as Bovis Lend Lease, the Peabody Trust, BAM, Asda Wal-Mart and Interserve.

Buildings that have benefitted from the Building Sciences treatment include the BBC’s Broadcasting House, the Old Stock Exchange in London, the RAF Cosford museum in Shropshire, St David’s Shopping Centre in Cardiff, Magdalene College in Cambridge, and Vodafone’s headquarters in Newbury.

“If we identified skilled people, even if we didn’t have a job for them, we’d create one. This is why, over time, we’ve been able to amass arguably the strongest team building envelope specialists out there – we straddle the divide between theory and practice, and we truly understand how construction works,” says Borland.

Essentially, Building Sciences functions as a ‘doctor’ for the built environment, new and old, diagnosing – using an array of nifty testing paraphernalia – consulting and, ultimately, curing defects that lead to cash and energy-sapping problems like poor air-leakage and thermal performance.

As a complement to this, it can help engineer subtle improvements through ‘building services’ solutions such as improving acoustic performance, reducing energy consumption by devising intelligent lighting design, and, as one of the few companies in the UK capable of doing so, undertaking finite modelling (numerical modelling of complex details, elements and assemblies to establish heat flows).

In order to stay at the cutting edge, Building Sciences actively embraces research and development. Recently, it has been working with cutting-edge building materials such as a carbon-positive hemp and limestone composite.

It has also been assiduously forging links with the Passivhaus Institut – a German voluntary standard that yields extremely efficient buildings that require minimal energy for space heating or cooling – and is intent on mastering the implementation of the Passivehaus Planning Package (PHPP), that few in the UK are privy to.

Impressed by the pertinence of Building Sciences’ service provision, leading multi-disciplinary environmental consultancy RSK Group acquired the company in January 2008 as a part of its strategy to build a portfolio of low carbon services.

The market for its services can only become more receptive with the UK built environment currently emitting nearly half of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and the Climate Change Act promising to reduce emissions by 80 percent on 1990 levels by 2050, and 34 percent by 2020.

In its recent energy white paper, the Government laid out a transition plan to reach the 2020 target by, among other things, proposing to cut emissions from homes by 29 percent by stumping up £3.2bn worth of investment. Furthermore, the promise of three million new homes by 2020 still stands, with any dwelling built from 2016 onwards having to attain zero carbon status through legislation such as the Code for Sustainable Homes environmental-rating scheme and the Building Regulations (England & Wales).

Another legislative boon came in June 2007, when the UK implementation of the Kyoto-inspired European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Directive 2002/91/EC) required Home Information Packs for dwellings with four or more bedrooms in England and Wales to include an Energy Performance Certificate, an explicit overview of a homes energy performance likely to affect housing value.

This was extended to all housing from January 2008. Consider also that the world is anticipating a forward-looking consensus to a post-Kyoto Protocol era following December’s critical United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and it is clear that the way we build and live is on the cusp of dramatic change. Building Sciences director Neal Prescott is confident his company is ready for the imminent step-changes. “Anything that promotes energy-efficient new buildings, or the assessment of the energy efficiency of existing buildings is going to create a demand for more knowledge and expertise in terms of how you design, build, measure and improve,”

At this moment in time, Building Sciences’ main contribution to reducing emissions is through the Building Regulations, particularly post 2002 when Part L (conservation of fuel and power) demanded that buildings should be constructed ‘reasonably airtight’ to minimise the loss of heat or conditioned air from within. The regulations suggested that ‘air permeabilities’ should not exceed 10m3/hr/m2 at an applied pressure difference of 50 Pascals.

“People are taking air leakage very seriously now,” explains Prescott. “The 2002 regulations were not particularly well enforced. When introduced, air tightness testing was seen by many builders as an annoyance, and just another hurdle they had to jump prior to completion. Now most clients understand that having fewer leaks in the building fabric is incredibly important.”

“If we get involved we can help clients engineer the envelope design to reduce ‘air permeablities’ down to 5m3/hr/m2 at 50Pa and below. As well as providing more robust durable building fabric, in some situations the associated heating and cooling loads may be reduced significantly, by up to 50–80 percent. ”

To demonstrate compliance of buildings with Part L of the building regulations, Building Sciences uses national calculation methodology (NCM) tools – standard assessment procedures (SAP) for dwellings (Part L), and the simplified building energy model (SBEM) for non-dwellings (Part L2). For complex buildings a specialist software package capable of creating dynamic simulation models (DSM) is used, enabling assessment of large and complex building enclosures, and full calculation of solar gain and summer overheating issues. The company’s Building Regulations expertise is such that it works as technical adviser to the Department of Communities and Local Government on Parts L and F (ventilation), a role it has held since 2004.

While the Building Regulations may be Building Sciences bread and butter for now, Borland is in little doubt as to where future business opportunities lie. “Refurbishment is where we anticipate a huge increase in demand for our services in the coming years,” he predicts. Of all CO2 emissions in the UK, 27 percent come from its housing stock, which is widely believed to be among the least energy efficient in Europe. Of the around 25 million houses that Britons call home, 6.3 million may be classified as sub-par.

Last year, a cross-party group of MPs, lead by Dr Phyllis Starkey MP, warned that the Government will not meet its ambitious CO2 reduction targets unless they moved to improve the environmental performance of existing houses through coherent policy action.

Noting that the average home is responsible for nearly twice as much carbon (1.6 tonnes per year) as the average new-build home (0.86 tonnes), the committee called for Building Regulations amendments to minimise emissions, potentially through legislation similar to the Code for Sustainable Homes environmental-rating scheme.

No concrete policy has emerged yet, but it would seem to only be a matter of time.