BCIA
Beyond compliance: why better buildings depend on better controls
A building can meet its design specification, achieve the required certification and still fail to perform as intended once it is handed over.
Heating may run longer than necessary, cooling can fight heating, and ventilation rates may bear little relation to occupancy. Equipment schedules can become outdated as working patterns change, while systems designed to operate efficiently can gradually drift away from their original settings.
For builders and building owners, closing that gap between design intent and real-world performance is becoming an increasingly important part of delivering a successful asset.
Energy efficiency and decarbonisation remain fundamental, but expectations of buildings are widening. Owners and occupiers increasingly need assets that control operating costs, provide comfortable and healthy environments, respond to changing patterns of use and remain resilient as the climate changes.
This is pushing Building Energy Management Systems( BEMS) much closer to the centre of decisions made during design, construction, commissioning and handover.
Building performance starts with the controls
BEMS bring together the controls for key building services, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning( HVAC), lighting and energy metering. More advanced systems can integrate multiple services and use occupancy and demand-based controls to respond to how a building is actually being used.
For a builder or building owner, that matters because the quality of the controls strategy affects more than whether individual items of plant operate. A welldesigned BEMS can monitor energy use, identify faults, coordinate systems that might otherwise work against each other, and give facilities teams the information they need to manage the building effectively after handover.
The technology can also support remote monitoring, analytics and automated optimisation, helping to improve performance across the whole building rather than treating heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting as separate systems.
The opportunity therefore starts well before practical completion: the required level of control needs to be considered early, specified clearly, commissioned properly and handed over in a way that supports ongoing operation.
From installing controls to delivering value
The commercial case for getting controls right is significant. BCIA’ s white paper, Comfort, Efficiency & Health: The Untapped Potential of Building Energy Management Systems, found that upgrading from a standard Class C BEMS to a highly advanced
Class A system can deliver measurable energy, carbon and cost savings.
For a typical 1,000m ² office, the research modelled ten-year savings of £ 23,485 and a payback period of around four years when upgrading from Class C to Class A controls. Over the same period, the office could save 105 tonnes of CO₂e. The research also found Class A BEMS to be more cost-effective for decarbonising a standard office than building fabric improvements, air source heat pumps or solar PV in the modelled comparison.
Those figures make controls a material part of the value-engineering conversation. Removing or reducing BEMS capability to lower capital cost can affect the operational savings and performance that the completed building is able to deliver.
It also reinforces the importance of defining what the system is expected to achieve before products are selected. Does it need occupancy and demandbased control? How will HVAC, lighting and metering interact? What data will the owner need? How will faults be identified, and how easily can the system be adapted as use of the building changes?
For builders, clients and design teams, answering those questions early can help protect design intent through construction, commissioning and handover, while giving the owner a stronger platform for managing performance throughout the asset lifecycle.
34 www. britbuild-magazine. co. uk