You have got to be in it to win it! Read the proposed changes to Part L of the Building Regulations and if you do not agree with them, or something vital to your area is not included, then you have to stand up and be counted.
The proposed changes to Part L of the Building Regulations, Conservation of Fuel and Power, and to Part F, Means of Ventilation, will most certainly affect all of you but, from past statistics, many of you will not comment. I therefore strongly urge all of you to review the relevant parts of the consultative documents and give CLG some feed-back - your comments are vital.

There may be areas you feel strongly should be covered in the Approved Documents that have not even been considered. The industry working groups have done their best to include everything but your particular building services specialist area may have been missed out. CLG won't know unless you tell it.

We all understand the importance of energy efficient equipment and control systems but what are the new proposed minimum requirements? Commissioning the complete installation and providing good user documentation will be critical to delivering carbon reductions in reality. Feedback on integration issues of fabric, air tightness, heating, cooling and ventilation is very important.

The three volumes on the CLG website have the five proposed Approved Documents and background information. Details of the changes to calculation procedures within SAP and SBEM and a Future Thinking Paper are also included. Consultation versions of SBEM and SAP are also available to download and will allow you to work through design scenarios to evaluate the proposed changes on carbon emissions.

The two Building Services Compliance Guides, one on domestic and the other on non-domestic, provide references to the appropriate British and European Standards for measuring the performance of the equipment and it may be appropriate for you to become fully conversant with these standards. There are new building services systems covered by the new guides including pumping.

There is a series of roadshows that will travel the country explaining the purpose of the new changes and highlighting what the changes mean in practice.

There is an expert's e-mail helpline - this will be able to answer the technical queries about pumps, boilers, chillers, heat pumps, calculation techniques etc. Government wants to hear your views and, with the roadshows and seminars that are being planned, there is no excuse for not knowing what is involved. Next year you will have to know - Part L and F 2010 are due to come into force.