Businesses involved in delivering such ’low-impact buildings’ will be given the opportunity to apply for a total of £8m investment from the government-backed Technology Strategy Board, which would allow them to evaluate the performance of ’case-study’ buildings.
The aim is to help the successful applicants to understand how their buildings perform and which design, construction and operation approaches work best in particular circumstances.
The data from all the successful case-study projects will be collated to form a source of detailed information on the building’s performance that will enable the building and design sector to use the information to develop improved buildings that use less energy.
The UK’s chief construction adviser, Paul Morrell, said: ’The industry needs reliable information to enable improvements in the performance of new and refurbished buildings. Research is required to compare actual performance with design data, to identify whether a building is delivering what it should do and whether it is being run as it should be.’
The programme, launched by the Technology Strategy Board’s Low Impact Building Innovation Platform, aims to make a contribution to increasing understanding across the sector and improving the competitiveness of UK companies.
The competition has been devised as a response to the fact that that there is typically a significant discrepancy between the predicted energy performance of a building - and hence its C02 emissions - and the measured performance.
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