Collaborative working for sustainable outcomes - a real life example with Chris Halligan MCIAT & Alex Tilley | 013

Chris Halligan: 00:00:02

Sustainability is a holistic process, needs to be integrated

Chris Halligan: 00:00:07

into buildings from the early stage, and that depends on an integrated

Chris Halligan: 00:00:10

design team for the early stages.

Chris Halligan: 00:00:12

As technologists, I firmly believe that should be what we are doing.

Adam Endacott: 00:00:18

Welcome to Where it's AT.

Adam Endacott: 00:00:20

The podcast from CIAT shining a spotlight on the future focused design

Adam Endacott: 00:00:24

discipline of architectural technology.

Adam Endacott: 00:00:28

Know someone who could benefit from listening.

Adam Endacott: 00:00:30

Subscribe and share this episode with your network.

Chris Halligan: 00:00:35

I'm Chris Halligan, chartered architectural technologist,

Chris Halligan: 00:00:38

chartered environmentalist, and I'm currently chair of

Chris Halligan: 00:00:41

Science's Climate Society.

Chris Halligan: 00:00:44

I've led teams from reception to completion across the.

Chris Halligan: 00:00:47

Variety of projects across numerous sectors, including residential,

Chris Halligan: 00:00:52

educational, commercial, leisure, institutional across

Chris Halligan: 00:00:57

a career span in over 30 years.

Chris Halligan: 00:00:59

As well as dealing with the technical and functional resolution of buildings.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:05

I also specialize in sustainable design.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:08

My interest in.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:09

Sustainability and the performance of building materials, especially in

Chris Halligan: 00:01:13

relation to the, the envelope and the environment, probably even predates

Chris Halligan: 00:01:18

my involvement with architecture.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:20

And over that time attempted to instigate various forms of design

Chris Halligan: 00:01:26

to create low impact projects.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:30

And eventually comes to conclusion that most of our efforts, aren't doing the

Chris Halligan: 00:01:35

job that's required, not because of any technical knowledge, but because

Chris Halligan: 00:01:39

of the way things really are run and acquired and the way we go about things.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:44

And I hope we're gonna sort of demonstrate that to you today.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:47

My guest co-host is Alex Tilley, who's senior building consultant at Nola

Chris Halligan: 00:01:52

Carbo, and a building physicist who I've worked with a couple of times.

Chris Halligan: 00:01:56

Hello, Alex.

Alex Tilley: 00:01:57

Hi everyone.

Alex Tilley: 00:01:58

I'm Alex Tilley.

Alex Tilley: 00:01:59

As Chris mentioned, I'm a senior building performance Consultant at N Carbo.

Alex Tilley: 00:02:03

I'm an accredited domestic and non-domestic energy assessor, and I am a

Alex Tilley: 00:02:08

technologist under the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineering.

Alex Tilley: 00:02:13

As Chris said, I fall into the area of construction that.

Alex Tilley: 00:02:17

He likes to specialize in the sustainability, the building envelope,

Alex Tilley: 00:02:20

the low impact building, and through the use of dynamic thermal modeling software,

Alex Tilley: 00:02:26

myself and my company, NOLA Carbo, look to support in building design in order

Alex Tilley: 00:02:32

to optimize the outcomes of a building, whether that be operational energy,

Alex Tilley: 00:02:37

operational cost, EPC rating or just holistic sustainability, which I think

Alex Tilley: 00:02:41

Chris and I both agree is the best route.

Chris Halligan: 00:02:44

What's podcast about is really is about one particular project and

Chris Halligan: 00:02:47

how Alex and I worked together on it and.

Chris Halligan: 00:02:50

This was a project in the Holbeck area of Leeds.

Chris Halligan: 00:02:53

It was a mixed use development.

Chris Halligan: 00:02:56

It was a single building.

Chris Halligan: 00:02:57

It was primarily a sports training hub.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:00

Changing rooms for outdoor football pitchers, a gymnasium.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:05

It had as well a pharmacy in there.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:07

And also a um, general practitioner surgery, a doctor's.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:12

Over two floors.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:14

It was really just a long rectangular box with a heavily

Chris Halligan: 00:03:18

glazed frontage facing south.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:20

Now I inherited this.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:22

I wasn't involved with initial design of it.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:25

I was given it at roughly RIBA stage two verging three.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:30

The building was designed but not fully coordinated now, like a lot of schemes

Chris Halligan: 00:03:36

that we technologists seem to be given, it had been designed before our involvement

Chris Halligan: 00:03:42

and I was asked to resolve that design and look at what we could do with it.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:46

And it became apparent that a lots sustainable principles hadn't been

Chris Halligan: 00:03:49

considered at the first stage.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:53

And it just assumed that any low or zero carbon requirement would be dealt with.

Chris Halligan: 00:03:58

By bolt-on systems at a later stage.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:00

Now that is completely against what I feel the technology should be doing

Chris Halligan: 00:04:05

and how buildings should operate.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:06

I believe that buildings should themselves be environmental modifiers through the

Chris Halligan: 00:04:12

envelope, but it's the kind of thing you have to consider right from the outset.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:16

So too often the basic design ignores environmental performance.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:23

Of the envelope and the fabric for a number of reasons.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:26

Being just put on the too hard shelf or lack of a client brief

Chris Halligan: 00:04:32

or buy-in or in the DMB sphere, contractor led decisions based on.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:37

Capital expenditure rather than operational costs because they have no

Chris Halligan: 00:04:41

long-term interest in the building itself and energy is still relatively cheap.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:47

So we had the singular advantage that we were working for the eventual

Chris Halligan: 00:04:54

occupier rather than a contractor.

Chris Halligan: 00:04:56

You wanna comment on that, Alex?

Alex Tilley: 00:04:58

Yeah, it was my um, second project working

Alex Tilley: 00:05:00

with you, Chris, wasn't it?

Alex Tilley: 00:05:01

Having uh, been involved in a previous project also with

Alex Tilley: 00:05:05

lead in the leisure sector.

Alex Tilley: 00:05:06

And I think we realized fairly quickly on just through design team meetings

Alex Tilley: 00:05:10

and contacts to each other that we're on a similar level when it comes to

Alex Tilley: 00:05:13

banging the drummer, sustainability.

Alex Tilley: 00:05:15

I appreciated working with you as a technologist due to your.

Alex Tilley: 00:05:19

Drive to improve a building and not just do the bare minimum.

Alex Tilley: 00:05:23

And it gave me a bit more agency and a bit more ability to be creative in what I do.

Alex Tilley: 00:05:28

And I think um, as we've shown previously and as we go on to show in this project

Alex Tilley: 00:05:32

a strong combination of technologists and building physicists can really lead

Alex Tilley: 00:05:35

to a truly sustainable building design.

Chris Halligan: 00:05:38

Yeah.

Chris Halligan: 00:05:39

As I said, we worked together previously on projects where he was

Chris Halligan: 00:05:42

actually engaged to support contractor led decisions and unfortunately a

Chris Halligan: 00:05:45

lot of the time that's re really.

Chris Halligan: 00:05:48

Almost a box ticking exercise to get through building regulations.

Chris Halligan: 00:05:51

And despite the fact that building regulations should be considered a

Chris Halligan: 00:05:54

minimum standard, they often become the defacto target for people just

Chris Halligan: 00:06:00

trying to spend as little as possible.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:02

We want to do things different on this one, and we had an opportunity

Chris Halligan: 00:06:05

because we persuaded the client to appoint Alex the company that is with.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:10

To really work with ourselves.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:12

we saw it as an opportunity to introduce low energy, a low energy

Chris Halligan: 00:06:16

concept as a guiding principle.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:18

Feel very strongly that early engagement of an integrated design team is an

Chris Halligan: 00:06:22

essential part of sustainable design.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:24

Although, frankly, on this scheme, it still wasn't early enough.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:27

It had been largely resolved.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:30

But when I started to look at it and start looking at sections and

Chris Halligan: 00:06:33

examining it, I realized that at least part of the building could benefit

Chris Halligan: 00:06:37

from the introduction of passive principles where it would need.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:42

Proving in detail to persuade the client of both the

Chris Halligan: 00:06:45

environmental economic benefits.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:48

So discuss the scheme and share my thoughts with Alex, by the way, of

Chris Halligan: 00:06:51

sketches using those red and blue arrows that we'd like to cover

Chris Halligan: 00:06:54

drawings with when we're talking about sustainable performance.

Chris Halligan: 00:06:57

And we started looking at concepts to introduce natural ventilation,

Chris Halligan: 00:07:01

exploiting thermal mass for night cooling and improved day lighting.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:06

And in fact, we started with the issue of day lighting.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:08

Alex provided a day lighting study which indicated there may be a problem

Chris Halligan: 00:07:12

with excess excessive glare close to those large areas of glazing on

Chris Halligan: 00:07:17

the south, as well as dark areas elsewhere, often within the same space.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:22

The first and fairly straightforward solution, we introduced sun pipes.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:27

To improve at least the upper floor daylight.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:29

We also studied how these might be used to transmit light to

Chris Halligan: 00:07:32

the lower floors via risers.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:35

But when it came to balancing the excessive glare at the edge of the

Chris Halligan: 00:07:38

deeper spaces, I introduced Alex to the concept of the light shelf.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:43

There's a very useful, somewhat dated document from the building

Chris Halligan: 00:07:46

research establishment called the Environmental Design Guide for naturally

Chris Halligan: 00:07:51

Ventilated and Daily to offices.

Chris Halligan: 00:07:53

And although we weren't really dealing with officers, it provided a, a basic

Chris Halligan: 00:07:57

guide to many aspects of passive design.

Chris Halligan: 00:08:00

And as rule of thumb principles for the design of light shelves.

Chris Halligan: 00:08:04

Now, light shelves can help with solar shading, but primarily redirect sunlight

Chris Halligan: 00:08:09

more evenly into deep plant spaces.

Chris Halligan: 00:08:12

So when Alex and I worked together trying.

Chris Halligan: 00:08:14

Various arrangements, dimensions, and heights of a shelf until we arrived

Chris Halligan: 00:08:19

at a design which resolved the issues of excessive glare and solar gain and

Chris Halligan: 00:08:24

Alex's modeling result in a report.

Chris Halligan: 00:08:26

Illustrating this, Alex,

Alex Tilley: 00:08:28

That's right.

Alex Tilley: 00:08:29

I think one thing to stress here is that in a traditional building

Alex Tilley: 00:08:34

physics, zero carbon roadmap the old saying goes, if you get the daylight

Alex Tilley: 00:08:38

right, everything else will be right.

Alex Tilley: 00:08:40

Natural daylight.

Alex Tilley: 00:08:42

You'll want it in your building.

Alex Tilley: 00:08:43

No one wants to be spending their days in a dark, artificially lit room.

Alex Tilley: 00:08:47

And what's also important in the UK where we have strong kind of like

Alex Tilley: 00:08:51

sunlight in the summer, but also in the shoulder seasons of autumn spring,

Alex Tilley: 00:08:56

is to ensure that you're not getting so much daylight that you're having a

Alex Tilley: 00:08:59

space overheating outside of summer.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:02

Now what we found, this is where the dynamic thermal modeling became important.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:06

'cause it was able to point us to issues that maybe wouldn't have been considered

Alex Tilley: 00:09:11

previous to the thermal modeling.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:14

Getting involved is that south facade was really over lit so that

Alex Tilley: 00:09:19

at the second floor there was a slight overhang on the roof of the

Alex Tilley: 00:09:21

building, if I remember correctly.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:23

And I think that the previous.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:25

Designers had decided that would be sufficient to provide overs, shading.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:30

But the reality is for most of the year in the uk, the sun doesn't

Alex Tilley: 00:09:33

sit right at the top of the sky.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:34

And if you've got a south facing facade that's a hundred percent glazed, you're

Alex Tilley: 00:09:37

gonna have a lot of issues there.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:39

So what we found was that the first three or four meters from

Alex Tilley: 00:09:42

the facade was completely over lit.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:44

It was well over 3000 lux, which is normally considered the

Alex Tilley: 00:09:46

most that you want in terms of natural daylight in this space.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:50

And importantly what that also indicated is that there could be

Alex Tilley: 00:09:52

some overheating issues in there.

Alex Tilley: 00:09:54

Now, some of those rooms on that facade we were looking to not put

Alex Tilley: 00:09:57

artificial cooling into, 'cause it's, again, it's enough energy consumption.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:01

So if we felt like if we could get that balance of daylight we would

Alex Tilley: 00:10:04

be able to enable a passive calling solution further down the line.

Chris Halligan: 00:10:08

it was a really interesting way of working

Chris Halligan: 00:10:10

actually, and it's, it is one of the reasons I wanted to share it

Chris Halligan: 00:10:14

with everybody else that as a team.

Chris Halligan: 00:10:17

I had knowledge of certain technical devices such as light

Chris Halligan: 00:10:21

shells, but Alex understood the actual physics to put it together.

Chris Halligan: 00:10:25

And um, so working together, we learned off each other and

Chris Halligan: 00:10:31

came to a reasonable conclusion.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:34

it was great, Chris, that you could send me an email one day and

Alex Tilley: 00:10:37

kind of be like, Alex, I've had this idea.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:39

I've done a sketch in my head.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:41

This works in concept, this works based on the, my previous.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:44

Years of experience in the industry.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:46

But can you gimme some evidence?

Alex Tilley: 00:10:47

Can you gimme some data so I can go to our client and occupant and actually say to

Alex Tilley: 00:10:51

them, I don't think this is gonna work.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:52

I know it's gonna work.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:54

And through that, we were able to go through this iterative process.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:57

Even with something as simple as the depth of the light shelf.

Alex Tilley: 00:10:59

We were able to work out the optimal kind of dimensions of the light shelf on

Alex Tilley: 00:11:04

that south facing curtain wool facade.

Alex Tilley: 00:11:06

And then go back to the client in a presentation further down

Alex Tilley: 00:11:09

the line and say to them, this is exactly what we need to do.

Alex Tilley: 00:11:11

This isn't just rules of thumb.

Alex Tilley: 00:11:12

This is specific to your building exactly in your location with exactly your

Alex Tilley: 00:11:17

dimensions.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:19

So the day lighting was just part of it.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:20

That was just the start of it.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:21

And then we started looking at how to possibly naturally

Chris Halligan: 00:11:24

ventilate and cool the building.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:27

At least part of it.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:29

So we discussed the idea of introducing thermal mass and natural ventilation.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:35

And we were both familiar with the base concept, but Alex proved that.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:40

The base concept that would work, but there wouldn't be enough thermal mass in

Chris Halligan: 00:11:45

the current design to form adequately.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:47

He had quite a lightweight roof, quite a nice curved aluminum

Chris Halligan: 00:11:52

roof with nothing underneath it.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:54

Now for those of you that familiar.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:57

Not familiar with thermal mass.

Chris Halligan: 00:11:59

If you have a thermally heavyweight material such as concrete over the

Chris Halligan: 00:12:03

day, it will absorb heat and then eight hours later it'll remit it.

Chris Halligan: 00:12:08

If you can vent that heat at night, use night cooling in a temperate climate at

Chris Halligan: 00:12:13

least it can help to temper and even out the internal temperatures in the building.

Chris Halligan: 00:12:19

as we didn't have enough concrete.

Chris Halligan: 00:12:21

I suggest the use of face change materials.

Chris Halligan: 00:12:24

Now, face change materials are something that I've followed since

Chris Halligan: 00:12:27

they first appeared a few decades ago, and there are particular variety

Chris Halligan: 00:12:33

of material usually based on a form of oil formed into boards, which can

Chris Halligan: 00:12:40

act in the same way as a thermally heavy materials such as concrete.

Chris Halligan: 00:12:44

But looks more like plasterboard.

Chris Halligan: 00:12:47

So I introduced a particular board product to Alex, and after acquiring

Chris Halligan: 00:12:51

the necessary technical data, he modeled the introduction of this ceiling level

Chris Halligan: 00:12:56

in the spaces we were looking at.

Alex Tilley: 00:12:58

Yeah, so this was my first uh, first time properly modeling phase

Alex Tilley: 00:13:03

change materials within the software that we use, which is ISVE, which is a

Alex Tilley: 00:13:08

virtual environment where you can do a whole kind of host of things to do with

Alex Tilley: 00:13:12

building simulation and modeling and.

Alex Tilley: 00:13:16

As it goes, IES has now released an update to incorporate these

Alex Tilley: 00:13:19

types of phase change materials.

Alex Tilley: 00:13:20

So it's clear that Chris and I were riding on a wave of phase change material that

Alex Tilley: 00:13:24

is very rapidly growing and swelling just down to the benefits that it can provide

Alex Tilley: 00:13:30

when it comes to a natural ventilation strategy, especially if you're looking

Alex Tilley: 00:13:33

for a lightweight structure or if you're not able to get concrete on site.

Alex Tilley: 00:13:38

But unfortunately, that wasn't available when we did this a year or so ago.

Alex Tilley: 00:13:42

So instead I had to prorata the equivalent thermal mass that we were looking

Alex Tilley: 00:13:47

at within IES using a typical heavy heavyweight construction such as concrete.

Alex Tilley: 00:13:52

I then took that kilo JUUL per Kelvin figure and worked out the equivalent

Alex Tilley: 00:13:58

meter squared of this phase change material that would be required to

Alex Tilley: 00:14:01

put it up on the ceiling basically.

Adam Endacott: 00:14:08

Know someone with a story to tell or a topic to

Adam Endacott: 00:14:10

explore email atpodcast@ciat.global to nominate a guest or a topic.

Chris Halligan: 00:14:21

Yeah, and we did, we did look at, discussed at one point

Chris Halligan: 00:14:24

putting it on the walls, didn't we, to increase and increase the area.

Chris Halligan: 00:14:28

But that was interesting with Alex provided me with a criteria to work

Chris Halligan: 00:14:32

to, in terms of square meterage.

Chris Halligan: 00:14:33

And then I looked at how we can incorporate it architecturally, we

Chris Halligan: 00:14:37

introduced the PCM board as ceilings, but in order to allow the wall air to

Chris Halligan: 00:14:42

rise and be extracted as part of the cooling process at roof level, these

Chris Halligan: 00:14:47

ceilings couldn't be wall to wall.

Chris Halligan: 00:14:49

So we ended up with a series of rafts, which also would've provide acoustic

Chris Halligan: 00:14:53

baffling in otherwise quite tall spaces.

Chris Halligan: 00:14:57

They also provide mounts for light fittings as well as the face change

Chris Halligan: 00:15:00

materials and allow that rising air to.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:05

Rise past them, that Walmart to rise past them and be vented out.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:08

We tried a few different layouts.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:11

It was again, a trial and error operation.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:12

I'd sketch a few.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:14

Alex would model it and tell me what he thought, and we just, we

Chris Halligan: 00:15:17

kicked suggestions back and forth.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:19

It was a great team experience.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:21

Now a similar two-way operation applied to the areas of glazing,

Chris Halligan: 00:15:25

solar shading and vent louvers.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:26

As Alex suggested, I would throw suggestions and he would advise

Chris Halligan: 00:15:30

on the impact in the overall environmental performance.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:34

And although we're talking to you here about these separate

Chris Halligan: 00:15:36

subjects, it's important to realize.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:39

That we were dealing with the environmental design as a whole.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:42

It was a holistic process.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:44

You can't separate just one thing out from the rest.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:47

So Alex was instrumental in informing the design constraints for the detailed

Chris Halligan: 00:15:52

design to achieve what we intended and eventually arrived at Optum Solution.

Chris Halligan: 00:15:57

We came up with some basic design parameters providing ventilation, the

Chris Halligan: 00:16:00

external wall airflow through the spaces, incorporating face change materials,

Chris Halligan: 00:16:06

ceilings, and exited at high level via internal wall and then ceiling

Chris Halligan: 00:16:10

vents and the internal wall vents that have to be acoustic rated as well.

Chris Halligan: 00:16:14

'cause some in meeting rooms.

Chris Halligan: 00:16:16

So it was quite a convoluted process, but in the end I think we

Chris Halligan: 00:16:20

came up with something that worked.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:21

Yeah, we definitely did.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:22

And um, this is where I'd like the listener to visualize one

Alex Tilley: 00:16:25

of those blue and red arrow diagrams that you um, drew Chris.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:28

And imagine that we have our building in section, we're looking at the

Alex Tilley: 00:16:31

first floor and I mean like a lot of commercial buildings, it's not

Alex Tilley: 00:16:35

narrow enough in depth to have two-sided ventilation within one room.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:39

That's just the, the financial reality of, of buildings.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:41

It's very difficult to make a, a very long, thin building.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:45

Thus, we were looking at one-sided ventilation, which just reduced the

Alex Tilley: 00:16:49

scope of natural ventilation because you can't quite get far enough into

Alex Tilley: 00:16:53

the room with one-sided ventilation.

Alex Tilley: 00:16:55

So therefore, we started to consider how about we pull some air through, as Chris

Alex Tilley: 00:17:00

said, internal Lous above the corridor.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:03

Inside of the rooms and then up through some turrets or wind catches on the roof.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:08

Then we also realized that was, again, still wasn't quite enough with

Alex Tilley: 00:17:11

regards to providing sufficient free calling through natural ventilation.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:17

Myself and my company ran it against the typical TM 52 thermal

Alex Tilley: 00:17:21

comfort requirements, and there was just a little bit more needed.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:24

So what we ended up doing is putting in some louvers on the external facade

Alex Tilley: 00:17:28

at a low level, which were actuated.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:32

Thus we had.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:33

High and low openings on the external facade, and then an

Alex Tilley: 00:17:36

opening on the internal side through to a roof tart wind catcher.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:40

This enabled us to get a really good amount of flow through the room, and

Alex Tilley: 00:17:43

importantly with the actuated louvers enabled us to use a bit of night purge.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:47

So as Chris said, thermal mass is great.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:49

Eight hours later you get a lot of heat being released, but you need to

Alex Tilley: 00:17:53

make sure that heat can go somewhere.

Alex Tilley: 00:17:55

That means you even need to have a window open or a ventilation unit running

Alex Tilley: 00:17:58

overnight ventilation units more energy.

Alex Tilley: 00:18:01

So if possible, you'd ideally just have a window or for security reasons, an

Alex Tilley: 00:18:05

actuated lure open overnight and for a series of iterations, we are able to work

Alex Tilley: 00:18:10

out the optimal dimensions for this lure.

Alex Tilley: 00:18:11

Won't me, Chris?

Chris Halligan: 00:18:12

Yeah.

Chris Halligan: 00:18:13

as we go forward through this, you'll see that the decisions we're making

Chris Halligan: 00:18:17

and the solutions we're coming up with we're having to be introduced into a

Chris Halligan: 00:18:21

really, an already designed envelope now.

Chris Halligan: 00:18:24

Please try and imagine how much easier this would've been if the

Chris Halligan: 00:18:27

original designer sat down and thought, okay, I've got this facade.

Chris Halligan: 00:18:31

How am I gonna bring air in here?

Chris Halligan: 00:18:33

When we come up with the idea of Loures, part of my job was to

Chris Halligan: 00:18:36

incorporate it aesthetically rather than just banging vents on the outside

Chris Halligan: 00:18:41

of a wall and hoping it'll work.

Chris Halligan: 00:18:43

We actually incorporated it in the curtain walling and had a

Chris Halligan: 00:18:46

strip going around the building.

Chris Halligan: 00:18:47

It became a design feature that's what doesn't tend to happen is that

Chris Halligan: 00:18:51

if you're dealing with a bolt-on type solution We were incorporating

Chris Halligan: 00:18:56

these solutions within the, the fundamental design of the building.

Chris Halligan: 00:19:00

Uh, But we could only go so far with it because it had already been

Chris Halligan: 00:19:03

designed largely in terms of mass.

Chris Halligan: 00:19:05

So anyway, Alex prepared, a first report.

Chris Halligan: 00:19:08

Taking into account all these suggested principles came up with illustrations

Chris Halligan: 00:19:12

about the financial and environmental impacts for various degrees and

Chris Halligan: 00:19:16

combinations of implementation.

Chris Halligan: 00:19:19

Going from your bog standard with the gas boilers through to fully sit all singing,

Chris Halligan: 00:19:25

all dancing and actually into looking what would happen if we introduce additional.

Chris Halligan: 00:19:31

Technologies such as photovoltaic cells.

Chris Halligan: 00:19:35

As I say, we came up with a sliding scale of options and it

Chris Halligan: 00:19:38

was incredibly well received.

Alex Tilley: 00:19:40

Yeah, I think that there was a balance to be struck with the reporting

Alex Tilley: 00:19:44

in that we had the occupant sat in the meeting that we were presenting to.

Alex Tilley: 00:19:48

We had the.

Alex Tilley: 00:19:49

I guess the funder, the person who is more bothered about the capital costs.

Alex Tilley: 00:19:54

And then we had ourselves who were looking to provide as sustainable

Alex Tilley: 00:19:57

building as possible in order to continue banging the drum in order

Alex Tilley: 00:20:00

to continue doing good for the earth through the construction industry.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:05

we found that the best way to do this presentation and it was received well

Alex Tilley: 00:20:08

was to go through and prove the concept first, to show that we were meeting

Alex Tilley: 00:20:11

daylight requirements to show that.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:13

We are environmentally comfortable with inside.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:16

And then to come in with the big hitters, which was the operational cost savings

Alex Tilley: 00:20:21

and the capital cost savings compared to a more typical budget design that you might

Alex Tilley: 00:20:27

look to do on one of these buildings.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:30

And I think that enabled us to get a real buy-in from everyone involved.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:33

All all the stakeholders on the project uh, especially providing kind of

Alex Tilley: 00:20:37

payback periods, returns on investment immediately the more financial

Alex Tilley: 00:20:41

driven people within that meeting.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:42

And you could see their eyes like lighting up as they realized we

Alex Tilley: 00:20:46

weren't just trying to create a difficult concept for our own egos.

Alex Tilley: 00:20:49

We were actually looking to save them money as well as save the

Alex Tilley: 00:20:53

impact of carbon on this planet.

Chris Halligan: 00:20:55

Yeah we tried to address every aspect of it.

Chris Halligan: 00:20:58

The environment is a very complex subject.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:00

Anything to do with the natural environment, it just isn't simple.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:04

There are lots of simple questions, no real simple answers.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:08

And I mean, we looked at everything that we thought could be counted as an

Chris Halligan: 00:21:11

offset in terms of operational costs.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:14

We, we actually as well start.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:16

Take into account maintenance original concept called for plant

Chris Halligan: 00:21:20

to gas boilers to be put on the roof or even air source heat pumps and.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:25

We looked at what the maintenance requirements would be for putting

Chris Halligan: 00:21:30

plant like that up on a roof, and we looked at how much it would cost

Chris Halligan: 00:21:34

for a crane to come, you know, at midpoint to swap things around.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:38

And that was just to demonstrate that a passive option would be far

Chris Halligan: 00:21:42

more cost effective than an active option, which is what we wanted to do.

Chris Halligan: 00:21:47

I think Alex, you looked at a payback assessment as well

Chris Halligan: 00:21:49

looking at what would happen if we introduced photovoltaics, didn't you?

Alex Tilley: 00:21:53

We did.

Alex Tilley: 00:21:54

Yeah.

Alex Tilley: 00:21:54

And it um, thankfully aligned with other studies done by the um, the

Alex Tilley: 00:21:58

end occupier on a similar project.

Alex Tilley: 00:22:00

So I think with the cost of electricity in the UK at the moment if you can

Alex Tilley: 00:22:04

maximize your roof with photovoltaic panels financially it just makes sense.

Alex Tilley: 00:22:07

You're um, you're looking at five to seven years of payback on your investment.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:11

Yeah.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:11

And um, the client as well had opportunity to get grant funded pvs, it

Chris Halligan: 00:22:17

tied in perfectly with our proposals, which were using ground source heat

Chris Halligan: 00:22:21

pumps for heating, as well as the passive ventilation and cooling.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:25

The PVS could be generating energy to feed into our system and.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:31

This report was incredibly well received.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:34

It, It went way better than I could have ever expected, and I think the difference

Chris Halligan: 00:22:37

was we were pushing an open door in term as soon as we started to talk about

Chris Halligan: 00:22:41

operational costs rather than capital expenditure, that's when we got the client

Chris Halligan: 00:22:47

because it was gonna be his building.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:48

And in fact, it worked almost too well.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:52

the client so much, they then asked us to look at extending the

Chris Halligan: 00:22:55

principles to the entire building.

Chris Halligan: 00:22:58

Almost from the outset, Alex and I knew this had been nearly impossible

Chris Halligan: 00:23:02

just because the way it'd been designed the brief originally, it hadn't

Chris Halligan: 00:23:06

really been taken to into account.

Chris Halligan: 00:23:09

And in the end that did prove to be the case.

Chris Halligan: 00:23:12

But again, that was an interesting exercise which in effect demonstrated

Chris Halligan: 00:23:17

that if these principles aren't taken into account from inception, it

Chris Halligan: 00:23:21

becomes very difficult to introduce.

Chris Halligan: 00:23:24

I think in the end, Alex demonstrated in his report that we could give

Chris Halligan: 00:23:27

the client a predicted operational saving, a saving in operational

Chris Halligan: 00:23:32

costs of roundabout 25,000 pounds a year when compared to the base level

Alex Tilley: 00:23:39

Which was massively important for the client because they'd had a

Alex Tilley: 00:23:42

whole host of projects that had recently.

Alex Tilley: 00:23:45

Pced and been in operation for a year where they were running miles

Alex Tilley: 00:23:48

over on their costs and it was turning the whole financial model

Alex Tilley: 00:23:51

into just not what was expected.

Chris Halligan: 00:23:54

And for me it was, it, it demonstrated and proved the

Chris Halligan: 00:23:59

concept of the integrated design team and was working off each other and all

Chris Halligan: 00:24:03

too often as professionals, if you're listening to this, you'll be aware that.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:07

Buildings really start off with a minimum number of people are there

Chris Halligan: 00:24:10

and engineers get appointed later on.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:13

That can't happen.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:14

It can't happen with sustainable design.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:16

Sustainability is a holistic process, needs to be integrated

Chris Halligan: 00:24:21

into buildings from the early stage, and that depends on an integrated

Chris Halligan: 00:24:24

design team for the early stages.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:27

So in conclusion, the success of the proposals that we arrived at

Chris Halligan: 00:24:30

illustrates just how effective that was.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:33

But also it's really important to consider the fabric of the

Chris Halligan: 00:24:36

building and as an essential part of the environmental strategy.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:40

And exploring that right from inception as a constraint is a

Chris Halligan: 00:24:45

key part of a low energy solution.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:47

And as technologists, I firmly believe that should be what we are doing.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:52

We should be involved from the earlier stages and bringing

Chris Halligan: 00:24:55

our skills to the table.

Chris Halligan: 00:24:58

To advise on how the envelope and the fabric of buildings can be exploited

Chris Halligan: 00:25:04

to provide a low impact building.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:08

However, Holbeck ISS still not built.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:11

There are various funding, solu funding problems with it.

Alex Tilley: 00:25:15

There's only so much we can do, Chris.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:17

it's, it is a complex um, contractual situation with a whole variety

Chris Halligan: 00:25:21

of clients involving local authorities.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:23

So the projects are still alive, whether it'll end up like we, we hoped it will be.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:27

I, I don't know.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:29

But on paper we know it works.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:32

It was a great experience.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:34

and work Alex and I working together.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:37

I think it really opened both our eyes, didn't it?

Alex Tilley: 00:25:40

Definitely, I think it was the first time I've had someone

Alex Tilley: 00:25:43

on my side within the design team with enough gusto, but also enough

Alex Tilley: 00:25:47

power in the design team to find that.

Alex Tilley: 00:25:51

The work I was doing and the data that I was outputting from my models

Alex Tilley: 00:25:54

could actually make a difference.

Alex Tilley: 00:25:55

It was great.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:56

yeah.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:57

I am pushy.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:57

Yeah.

Chris Halligan: 00:25:59

Alex um, is now with a company called Null Car.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:03

Correct.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:04

Another car.

Chris Halligan: 00:26:05

So just wanna let listeners know what you're

Chris Halligan: 00:26:07

doing at the moment, Alex.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:09

Yeah N Carver we're based in Leeds very small specialist

Alex Tilley: 00:26:13

building performance consultancy.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:14

We've got decades of experience across the team primarily looking at.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:18

Designing healthier internal environments through passive low energy strategies.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:23

Looking at real world performance as well as just energy compliance.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:27

And I think the thing, the main thing I wanna talk about that we've been doing

Alex Tilley: 00:26:29

is something called parametric analysis.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:32

So the story that Chris and I just told was looking at a serial analysis.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:36

It was looking at changing one variable at a time.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:39

So I said at the start about how we're gonna go for daylight.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:42

First.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:42

'cause if you get daylight everything else is right.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:45

And that's great.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:45

And it's a very simple, typical way of going through this design process.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:50

We'll consider the daylight first.

Alex Tilley: 00:26:52

We'll make sure that it's as optimal as possible, and then we'll move on to the

Alex Tilley: 00:26:56

natural ventilation and thermal comfort strategies is now that, that allows a

Alex Tilley: 00:27:00

really good story to be told, but a new style of analysis called parametric.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:06

Allows us to analyze all of the variables that we just mentioned in parallel.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:12

So essentially we could have put all of those different options, whether

Alex Tilley: 00:27:15

it's daylight, whether it's active systems, whether it's thermal mass into

Alex Tilley: 00:27:20

a large model simulation and output.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:23

Leveraging the kind of the power of computers that we have these

Alex Tilley: 00:27:26

days to give us a kind of field of probability that would've enabled

Alex Tilley: 00:27:29

Chris and I to essentially pick out the perfect path for the building.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:33

Imagine you've got a box building, you're a technologist at stage one or two, you.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:38

You wanna optimize the orientation of the building.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:41

So you do one variable change each time you work out.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:44

It probably wants to be westward facing.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:46

And then you go what fabric you value should we go for?

Alex Tilley: 00:27:49

And you work out the optimal fabric you value is for a west facing building.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:53

Now what you may have missed is that there actually might be a more

Alex Tilley: 00:27:55

optimal solution for your, your ideal outcome using a different orientation.

Alex Tilley: 00:27:59

But you never explored it 'cause you initially decided that

Alex Tilley: 00:28:02

North was the best orientation.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:05

Using the parametric analysis tool enables you to do it completely

Alex Tilley: 00:28:09

holistically and pick out the best possible design approach.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:13

But what's great is you can run thousands of simulations, all the

Alex Tilley: 00:28:16

different combinations of variables, and then sit down with the design

Alex Tilley: 00:28:19

team and restrict certain variables.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:22

So you might have someone chipping in from the planning side and say, look,

Alex Tilley: 00:28:26

we have to have the building facing this way, so you go we're only gonna look at.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:30

Simulations with a west facing building and then someone at the

Alex Tilley: 00:28:33

um, the construction of the facade engineer may say, oh, we can't do a

Alex Tilley: 00:28:36

u value that's any better than that.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:38

We can't put more insulation in.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:39

So you set another variable and then suddenly you find that there's only three

Alex Tilley: 00:28:43

different options left, for example, that enables you to hit net zero carbon

Alex Tilley: 00:28:48

with a certain amount of rooftop pb.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:50

So this parametric is so exciting for.

Alex Tilley: 00:28:55

The future, and I'm hoping that Chris and I can work on another project again

Alex Tilley: 00:28:58

similar to Holbeck

Chris Halligan: 00:28:59

It has moved incredibly quick.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:00

The process we told you about is a couple of years ago now, isn't it?

Chris Halligan: 00:29:04

And the software has improved.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:06

Vastly.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:07

But the key to this is that, that the, the concepts that I was

Chris Halligan: 00:29:11

introducing to Alex weren't complex.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:14

What he needs is just somebody that understands what those concepts are,

Chris Halligan: 00:29:18

and then to get somebody like Alex involved to prove them and refine them.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:23

And that's the way forward for me and that's what we should be introducing.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:27

I think that brings us to the end of this episode.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:29

I'd love to give Alex a huge thank you for joining us and sharing insights and

Chris Halligan: 00:29:34

what we did with the Holbeck Project and to everybody else out there.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:38

Thanks for joining us.

Chris Halligan: 00:29:39

I hope you learn something from this and I hope we made a difference.

Alex Tilley: 00:29:44

Thank you very much.

Adam Endacott: 00:29:47

You've been listening to where it's at.

Adam Endacott: 00:29:50

A huge thanks to our guests and to you for listening.

Adam Endacott: 00:29:53

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Adam Endacott: 00:29:57

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