BUILD UP

Thermal comfort, indoor air quality and daylight are key factors regarding the comfort of building occupants. Despite the interconnection of these aspects and their related requirements, the way to achieve indoor air quality and thermal comfort are not sufficiently clear in some EU countries. This situation underlines the importance of addressing the topic of building operation, which is crucial for ensuring adequate comfort and quality levels while, at the same time, achieving effective energy efficiency.

Every month, BUILD UP highlights publications covering a specific topic. September’s Topic of the Month is ‘Architecture and Construction 4.0’. The website is already available for contributions and BUILD UP’s editorial board is eager to receive your discussion papers, news and articles.

The 7th edition of our Expert Talks series hosts Carsten Druhmann, lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Facility Management (Zurich University of Applied Sciences) and head of the Real Estate Management Competency Group. The questions addressed focus on the roles of facilities management and buildings operation and maintenance in ensuring that the foreseen performance of a project is achieved and in contributing to energy efficiency, health and sustainability.

Recently, global sustainable building technology society ASHRAE’s Epidemic Task Force has released guidance on mitigating potential health risks during the reopening of buildings which were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems.

The coronavirus pandemic will create a fundamental shift in how the workspace is conceived, designed and operated. Never before has implementing strategies to benefit occupants’ mental health and physical well-being been more critical than it is now. Indeed, health and wellness strategies will be inextricably linked to the new norm for office design and operations. ‘Health and wellness will move from a “nice to have” to a “must have”,’ says Paul Scialla, founder and CEO of Delos, and founder of the International WELL Building Institute.

The U.S. Green Building Council released four new LEED Safety First Pilot Credits in response to COVID-19 to support environmental and occupational health. The credits outline sustainable best practices that align with public health and industry guidelines related to cleaning and disinfecting, workplace re-occupancy, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) and plumbing operations. The credits can be used by LEED projects that are already certified or are undergoing certification.

A special edition of the REHVA journal provides a quick guide to understanding the CEN-CE Horizon 2020 project which is developing an EU-wide common large-scale training and qualification scheme for building professionals.

In the building industry, quality control practices during the design stage, implementation, introduction and use varies. In addition, the owner’s project requirements may also vary. The instrumentation, measurements and the control options are different. The final product resulting from the building process is the indoor environment. When evaluating the need to renovate existing buildings and to control the performance of a new building, certain procedures are required.

Renovation of the Via Passeggiata dei Castani residential complex is one of the interventions developed during the European Commission’s FP7 Smart City project SINFONIA which was concluded at the beginning of 2019.

This building, which is a very ambitious construction in Warsaw’s city centre, has been nominated for the BREEAM energy award 2020. The site was originally occupied by a 10-storey block of flats built in 1960. That was demolished in 2017 to allow for the construction of the new complex, which is more closely aligned to the latest demands of Warsaw’s office market.

Facility management (FM) is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure the functionality, comfort, safety and efficiency of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.

European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) is an organisation funding the creation of research networks, known as COST Actions. A COST Action is open to all science and technology fields, Institutions, career stages and COST Members. Some of these actions are strictly related to buildings.

For someone outside the building sector, many of the shorthand symbols frequently used in Passive House related content – including educational videos, press releases, webinars, and even some posts – can be quite confusing. What the heck is a U-value? What are all those different subscripts? And what the heck is this symbol Ψ? Don’t fret. We will get into all of those.

Join the community to work on the biggest renovation challenge ever: 1 million homes to be transformed into near-energy neutral houses by 2023. Many enthusiastic local and regional governments, funders, corporates, SMEs and citizens groups are already part of our ‘1 Million Homes’ community.

Particularly in times of pandemics, it is important that different building occupants are aware of the invisible correlation between indoor environmental quality, personal health and energy efficiency. By raising such awareness, we can provoke new behaviour that can result in better well-being and more energy-efficient buildings.

To effectively de-risk investments in the building sector and facilitate the upgrading of building performance and energy efficiency services in Europe, policy, financing and technical tools need to work together in a coordinated and coherent manner.

The website of the Renovate Europe Campaign presents a huge number of building renovation best practices across Europe. The scope is to provide a set of exemplary case studies to be further replicated in order to boost the building renovation rates among the EU Member States towards the reduction of 80% of energy demand by 2050.

The interactive tool enables the user to navigate through the results of the multi-objective building life-cycle cost and performance analysis of the CRAVEzero case studies. In particula there is information on office buildings (Välå Gard, Aspern), multi-family residential buildings (Isola Nel Verde, Solallén, Alizari, Les Heliades, Green Home Nanterre) and single-family residential buildings (MORE).

Building and district simulations and associated methodologies are the focus of this event. Emphasis is also placed on complementary topics such as building information modelling (BIM), component-level simulations, and monitoring and operation of buildings and urban systems.

The 6th International Symposium on Occupant Behaviour will focus on designing and operating buildings supported by digital technologies with an occupant focus, and the underlying comfort, behaviour and energy considerations.

By and large, the building and construction industries determine how residents interpret their surroundings and built environment. As such, it is vital to re-engineer our cities and towns to correspond more directly to the natural landscapes they inhabit.

Sustainability targets and climate change objectives cannot be met without addressing buildings and the built environment at the building, district and urban scale to include our transport and energy infrastructures.