Occupant behaviour is the key to saving energy in buildings, according to engineering practitioners and researchers who attended the recent Rinnai-sponsored CIBSE Technical Symposium 2013.
Held at Liverpool John Moores University on 11 and 12 April, the annual Symposium provides an opportunity to exchange practical experience as well as new research findings and observations. This year's event focused on the need to address occupant behaviour and 'operability' to help reduce energy use in buildings.
CIBSE president elect, George Adams, summed up the theme of operability in buildings: 'A lot of the presentations showed how critical it is to feedback a building's operation into the delivery process.'
Buildings typically consume two to three times more energy than predicted at design stage, and this is often due to a failure to understand occupant behaviour. Justin Snoxall of British Land, winner of the CIBSE Carbon Champion of the Year Award in 2013, demonstrated how working with occupants and engineers in the daily management of buildings, the company has reduced energy use in its multi-tenanted office estate in London by 39% over four years.
David Arnold from London South Bank University also examined occupant behaviour and presented an interesting insight into why products can fail. This explored the relationship between preventing malfunction and the need to improve the designer's knowledge and experience of such products.
Samantha Mudie of University of Reading looked at energy data from restaurants and pubs which showed electricity output to be well over current industry estimates. She highlighted a need for the sector to look at working habits, and particularly in light of the high turnover of staff, of educating employees to help reduce energy use.
The final paper about Zero Carbon Homes was presented by Emma Heffernan from Plymouth University. It considered the unlikeliness of occupants wanting to change their behaviour and reduce energy use. She highlighted the need for clarity of government carbon targets and how this affects people's homes and lives.
In addition, WRAP representatives Dave Cheshire and Ant Wilson highlighted the importance of resource efficiency and outlined the objectives of a WRAP-funded project looking at the topic specifically as it relates to building services. The project will explore opportunities to raise awareness of resource efficiency and ways to change behaviour from automatically scrapping building service systems to consider recycling and reuse of services.
Papers and presentations from the Symposium are available online at
www.cibse.org/symposium2013. Next year's CIBSE Technical Symposium will be held in Dublin from 3-4 April.