Assignment Brief

PART A

Identify a building or part of a building, preferably one which has been in use for some time. The building may be commercial or institutional – an office, school, library, hotel, department store etc or it may be industrial. Whatever the purpose of the building, it should be used by a significant number of people. The focus of this assignment is on environmental conditions provided for the users (NOT the design of services). You should carry out the following steps:

1. Describe the building and its services as well its current energy performance. You do not need detailed information of the energy use of the buildings and certainly no information on sub-metering. The only information that you need is the overall annual energy consumption (in most cases this is provided by fuel type through the utility companies). If the Building has an Energy Certificate then the information can be taken from this Certificate.
2. Examine the environmental performance of the building using the Environmental Building Appraisal method (described below) and include a discussion of all aspects of this appraisal.
3. Seek feedback from the building users. For this you should not use the Environmental Appraisal Forms but you should investigate methods on how to best get feedback from the users. In some cases, a questionnaire might be the appropriate method (and you should discuss how you constructed this questionnaire and how you analyse the results) or a structured interview might be more suitable (in this case also you need to discuss how the interviews were carried out, what questions were included and why and how the responses were analysed). In some cases, both (or additional) methods might be required depending on the categories of the users you would like to include in your analysis.
4. Compare your subjective assessment with the users’ feedback.
5. Present your conclusions and recommendations for the building based on your findings above.

PART B

6. With reference to the building you investigated in Part A, choose one aspect of the Environmental Building Appraisal (ie. noise, thermal, ventilation, lighting or fire services etc) and discuss the objective criteria given in guides, regulations and codes of practice.
7. A file with environmental data (air temperature and relative humidity) is provided. This excel file includes air temperature and relative humidity data recorded every 15mins for almost 11 months in an operational office. The office is located on the first floor in the corner of a three storey building constructed in 1970’s in the UK near Heathrow airport. It has a floor are of 15m², floor-to-ceiling height 2.8m, exposed concrete on the ceiling, walls of painted brick and carpet on concrete floor. There is no thermal insulation in the structure. The office is naturally ventilated and heated by perimeter radiators. It has single-glazed windows covering 60% of the two external walls, facing due east and due south. All windows have internal vertical blinds. The office has one occupant who does not keep regular working hours; some meetings with up-to five people take place in the office occasionally. Equipment includes one desk top computer. Lighting is provided three luminaires each equipped with twin T5-35W tubes. Lighting control is automatic; daylighting linked and presence control. You will need some external weather data to investigate the effect of external conditions. A useful website, from where you can extract external weather data for specific days, is: http://www.wunderground.com/history/. You could also find information about Degree Days in http://www.degreedays.net/.

Your assignment for this question is to analyse the monitored data for this office to evaluate whether thermal comfort is likely to be provided for the occupant and propose strategies to improve thermal comfort. Such strategies could include energy efficient refurbishment of the office.

8. Assignment Project management: Include a project time plan for the assignment; ie a bar (Gantt) chart and/or a network diagram and discuss briefly the tasks. A project time plan (which should be prepared in the beginning of the assignment) can help you identify the tasks which may be tackled in parallel, which tasks need to be completed before moving to the next stage and help you manage you time over the project duration.

Useful resources:

1. CIBSE Environmental Design, CIBSE Guide A, CIBSE, 2006
2. CIBSE TM46, Energy Benchmarks, CIBSE 2009 (available from CIS database see below).
3. http://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/ – this website includes information on post-occupancy evaluation of buildings and it includes downloadable articles published in the CIBSE journal of the PROBE project. Go to the Probe menu by clicking probe on the left hand side menu.
4. http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/ – this website includes publications on energy and environmental considerations in buildings. Go to ‘publications’ by clicking publication on the top menu and then you could find relevant publications for the type of building you examine.
5. You may also need to refer to legislation, eg data on fuel types and prices, fire regulations or access requirements etc. You may also need to refer to recommendations and codes of practice, eg internal temperatures, humidity levels, daylighting and/or artificial lighting levels. These could be country specific and of course it is not necessary to follow UK guidelines. You could use resources available in your country or region.

The Environmental Building Appraisal

This appraisal is concerned with the total environment – the aim is to provide some measure of the quality of a building, despite the subjectivity of individual appraisers. The pro-formas enable you to develop a critical approach towards the examination and experience of the environment. The appraisal should be completed in one visit, using the prepared pro-formas which are in the appendix. The appraisal should be completed without exhaustive objective evaluation – use your own views and opinions from the building users to complete the forms. The following guidelines should help you use the pro-formas effectively and to plan your appraisal:

            Stage 1 – First Appraisal Sheet (Sheet 1)

Make a quick tour of the building (say 5 to 10 minutes), both inside and out. Record your first impressions of the building as a whole on the seven-point scale provided. You may like to elaborate on your impressions and perhaps define some of the points on the criterion scale.

            Stage 2 – Detailed Appraisal (Sheets 2 to 5)

Make a detailed inspection of the building, considering in turn, the following factors:- organisation of spaces, visual and lighting, heating and air conditioning, and acoustics. Use the seven point scale where appropriate and note the reasons which led to your decisions about the ranking of each factor.

          Stage 3 – Re-appraisal (Sheet 6)

Collect up the individual appraisal scores from Stage 2 and make an assessment of the total environment based on your results. Compare these results with your initial overall impression of Stage 1. If there is a significant difference, try and establish the reason. Are there, for example, some environmental factors not considered which may nevertheless be important:- cleanliness/tidiness, smell/dust, tactile sensations, amenities (eg. food, toilets).

          Stage 4 – Recording and Discussion

Before leaving the building and writing your detailed critical appraisal, perhaps talk to some of the people who use the building. Form an impression of how the users may feel about the way the building works. You could survey opinions of some building users by distributing a questionnaire and/or interviewing building services staff. You may also wish to think about how the building reacts to global environmental issues such as: carbon dioxide production due to energy consumption, acid rain or ozone depletion due to CFC’s and HCFC’s etc. Finally, you may like to record the building using diagrams, sketches and photographs.

APPENDIX

Environmental Building Appraisal Forms

(a WORD file with these forms is available from BlackBoard Learn)

Stage 1 – First Appraisal: Total Environment

Using the seven point scale provided, rank the following factors associated with the total environment (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A1. Sheet 1 (total environment)

Use this space to elaborate on your impressions and define the points on the scale.

Stage 2 – Detailed Appraisal: Visual and Lighting Factors

Using the seven point scale provided, rank the following factors associated with the visual environment of the building (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A3. Sheet 3 (visual and lighting factors)

Stage 2 – Detailed Appraisal: Heating and Air Conditioning

Using the seven point scale provided, rank the following factors associated with the heating and air conditioning environment of the building (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A4. Sheet 4 (heating and air conditioning)

Stage 2 – Detailed Appraisal: Acoustics

Using the seven point scale provided, rank the following factors associated with the aural environment of the building (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A5. Sheet 5 (aural environment)

Stage 2 – Detailed Appraisal: Environmental Impact

Using the seven point scale provided, rank the following factors associated with the environmental impact of the building (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A6. Sheet 6 (environmental impact)

Stage 2 – Detailed Appraisal: Organisation of Spaces

Using the seven point scale provided, rank the following factors associated with the organisation and design of spaces within the building (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A2. Sheet 2 (organisation and design of spaces)

Stage 3 – Re-Appraisal

Summarise the assessments made so far, again using the seven point scale (1 least favourable, 7 most favourable).

Table A7. Sheet 7 (re-appraisal)

Use this space to note down any factors which have changed your assessment from the first overall appraisal (sheet 1). Note any environmental factors not considered.

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