The revised Building Regulations will make commissioning mandatory so finally allowing the industry to address building performance problems, says Martin Brown, director of Commtech.
GOVERNMENT aims to deliver 25% of the country's total carbon reduction by 2010, via the new Building Regulations, which is quite a target. It is now forcing the pace, using the regulations, and the new Part L in particular, to meet its commitments under the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.

We, in the building services industry, have no choice but to try and keep up.

The new regulations, which come into force next April, recognise that past attempts to address carbon reduction have failed because buildings rarely perform 'as built'. Poor scheduling and compressed construction timetables have led to many buildings never being properly commissioned, with air and water systems left unbalanced when the building is occupied, and this in turn has had a disastrous effect on energy performance and occupant comfort.

However, as of next April when the new Part L comes into effect, commissioning will sit at the heart of the regulatory framework.

Speaking at the recent HEVAR Show in Chelsea, Faber Maunsell director Ant Wilson, who is acting as a government consultant, explained: 'There is now a far greater emphasis on making sure what is built operates as designed, which means there will have to be a much greater investment in commissioning. It will no longer be possible to hand over a building without it being fully commissioned.'

All new buildings and systems will have to be commissioned to the standards set out in CIBSE Code M and unless the project team produces a certificate to that effect they will not get completion sign-off.

The continuing failure fully to commission buildings has cost the country dear in terms of energy waste and poor occupant comfort over the years. A building services system can be superbly conceived and designed but all that effort and investment is wasted if it is never set up properly to deliver optimum performance.

'Some 70% of our existing buildings will still be with us in 2050, so unless we sort out this existing stock now we will not save any energy at all,' added Mr Wilson. 'You will have to hit a 28% carbon reduction target on any new building and if your asset rating does not beat your legal requirement, you can't build it.'

All public buildings of more than 1,000m2 will have to display an energy certificate and that rating will have to be validated every year. The construction teams will also have to provide log books for building owners based on the CIBSE TM31 template.

This kind of legislation is long overdue, but now it is here it gives services engineers the chance to show what we can do to tackle climate change. We simply must get it right this time because we are running out of chances.

The biggest hindrance to sustainable design has been the short-term approach taken by financial managers. They were reluctant to wait longer than six months for payback on any investment but investment in energy saving measures would produce a far better return than the stock exchange in the medium to long-term.

Commtech has been able to show that an organisation with £600,000 to spend from October 2000 would have made a far bigger profit by putting it into energy saving equipment than investing it in either the FTSE or in a bank account. However, the argument depends on the equipment being fully commissioned and then continuously commissioned throughout its lifetime to maintain peak performance.

We used a live airport project as an example where the money was spent on items like variable speed drives, facilitating free cooling and ecomesh to improve the running efficiency of chiller plant at part load. With these measures in place there was a £350,000 profit in reduced energy costs amounting to a payback of just over three years on the initial investment. After that it is pure profit.

During the same period, £600,000 placed in a savings account would have delivered a profit of £165,000 and on the FTSE it would actually have lost more than £93,000.

HVAC plant is a major investment for any organisation, but commissioning engineers must be given the time they need to ensure systems are running properly.

Annual MoTs have long been a legal requirement for cars and it is time we had something similar for buildings which account for around 50% of the country's carbon emissions. We commissioning engineers have been arguing this point for years. Now, finally, the financial arguments are falling into place and the regulators are going to force the issue in our favour and to the advantage of building owners and operators all over the country.