CIBSE (the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers) has announced that entries for the 2017 Building Performance Awards have opened with two additional categories, for building services consultancy and product innovation.

An additional Consultancy category has been introduced for firms with 101-1000 employees and a new Product Innovation award has been created. This increases the total number of award categories to 16, and follows the record number of entries for the 2016 award ceremony. 

In addition to the new categories that have been added, the Building Services Consultancy of the Year award has been changed to Building Performance Consultancy of the Year, to recognise the primary reason that the consultancy is being recognised with an award.

The changes announced this week follow feedback and analysis of the 2016 awards, which attracted an unprecedented number of entries from a wide variety of businesses of all sizes and types. The new structure will allow innovative organisations to be recognised for their achievements whatever their scale or global reach, and to compete with their peers on a level playing field.

Also new to the awards line-up are the Product Innovation Awards, replacing the old Energy Saving Product category with two new awards which recognise the Energy Saving Product of the Year and the Energy Efficient Product of the Year. This is designed to differentiate between products which improve building performance, and products which are themselves efficient.

CIBSE technical director, Hywel Davies, said: “We’re very excited to be opening up the awards for entries again this year and we’re expecting another set of high quality entries. Last year’s awards attracted some of the best and most diverse entries we have ever seen, so we have changed the product related awards to reflect that.”

“To best promote building performance it is important that we recognise it in all its forms. We are all working towards cutting carbon emissions and it’s not all about the big companies with huge portfolios, smaller organisations have their own challenges and must be extremely innovative to overcome them. There are also a wide variety of technologies that are so diverse in their aims and means that they cannot all be judged in a single category.

“As a result, we have widened the field to recognise the work of more diverse technology and companies who are making big strides in their own fields.”