The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (Cibse) launched its Building Performance Awards 2014 (BPA) at British Land’s London headquarters on 3 July 2013. British Land was awarded Carbon Champion of the Year at the 2013 Awards, for its impressive achievements which include 38% energy performance savings across its portfolio, and 60% savings at head office at York House.
Cibse president George Adams said “Innovation and ideas are great, but it is their application that really counts. This is why the Building Performance Awards are so valuable – they reward actual, measured performance.”
A feature of the Cibse Building Performance Awards is that they recognise the businesses, teams, products and projects that deliver outstanding performance in the built environment. The awards focus on actual, measured performance, not design intent or performance specifications.
Cibse technical director and chairman of the judging panel, Hywel Davies outlined that post-occupancy evaluations would be desirable as supporting evidence for many of the categories, and encouraged participants to use the CarbonBuzz platform as a way of measuring building performance.
Call for judges
Chairman of the judging panel Hywel Davies issued a request for additional judges to put themselves forward. The closing date to put forward an application for this is 12 July 2013.
The judging panel consists of individuals whose combined skills and knowledge span all the elements that impact upon the performance of a building.
Judges are asked to attend one day of judging which takes place in October, prior to which they are asked to view and grade entries in three to four allocated categories. Please go to www.cibseawards/judges.
The BPA categories
There are some new categories to enter this year, including International Project and Energy Saving Product.
Meanwhile the New Build Project categories are now divided into value over £10m and value up to £10m. With the strong field of entries usually received the Refurbishment category has also now been divided for the first time this year into Projects value over £5m, and value up to £5m.
With the closing date for entries 12 September 2013, the full list of categories for the BPAs 2014 is as follows:
– New Build Project of the Year (value over £10m)
– New Build Project of the Year (value up to £10m)
– Refurbishment Project of the Year (value over £5m)
– Refurbishment Project of the Year (value up to £5m)
– International Project of the Year
– Building Operation Award
– Client Energy Management Award
– Client of the Year
– Building Services Consultancy of the Year
– Contractor of the Year
– Collaborative Working Award
– Energy Saving Product Award
– Training for Building Performance Award
Justin Snoxall, head of the business group at British Land also presented at the event, giving an overview of British Land’s 2013 Client Energy Management of the Year winning entry, and explaining the methods and tools used to transform energy use across British Land’s estate, and the ambitions for future savings.
Snoxall said making buildings deliver more efficiently required a change of mindset from both landlords and building occupiers, and that 15% of energy reductions in their office portfolio had come from aligning central plant run time.
Cibse maintains there is a need to be implementing simple, common sense measures; measures which its building performance assessments have shown can reduce energy usage by one fifth.
“British Land is delighted to have hosted the launch of Cibse’s Building Performance Awards. We applaud initiatives such as these as we believe that recognition of the investment made by companies to improve building performance will motivate and stimulate future thinking and innovation in this area,” Snoxall added.
The headline sponsors for the 2014 Building Performance Awards are Imtech, with categories sponsored by Space Air, Spirotech, Gratte Brothers, Baxi Commercial and Vaillant.
