The busy season

Hi, well October is now over and we are getting very close to Christmas and the festivities! October has been a great month with so much happening.

The 8th October started with a lunch at IMechE with the president Professor Richard Folkson, the ASHRAE President David Underwood, the chief executives and myself. Discussions focused very much around collaboration and a unified voice to government, better collaboration in Universities and education of engineering and science in the schools.

The evening saw the Employer of the Year award and the Graduate of the Year award. Congratulations go to SDS who not only won the mid size company award but the overall award. The entries were outstanding as usual but SDS showed great commitment to their programme and staff.

The YEN awards were excellent with it being the 20th Anniversary award and we had the pleasure of Kevin Mitrchell of Buro Haoppold who joined us from Dubai who was the first winner. Other previous winners attended to celebrate the award to Ryan Rodrigues who will attend the ASHRAE winter conference in Orlando. Runners up also received a cheque from the Rumford club.

Presenting the Employer of the Year prize to SDS at the Young Engineers Awards

The 9th saw a full day with a Presidents breakfast. CIBSE/ASHRAE liaison meeting Council and the Presidents Dinner, all held at the Institute of General Practioners in Euston Square. CIBSE/ASHRAE relations go from strength to strength thanks from amazing hard work by Tim Dwyer , the new Council meeting format with the President Elect being the board liaision are working well and the close of the day with the President dinner was excellent. 

At the dinner, I present individual awards to members who have done outstanding work for the Institution. Different from so many awards in our industry, I feel this are more personal being for individuals who go beyond the norm to support CIBSE.

This years awards were:

•  Hays Building Services President’s prize: Kaitlin Allen from Nottingham University

The CIBSE Undergraduate Award sponsored by Hays Building Services has been in existence for over 20 years. It is designed to encourage students to develop their potential and aim for excellence.  It is awarded to students in their final year of a building services course accredited by CIBSE recognising their academic achievements at the end of their course of study. 

Kaitlin studied for a MEng in Architectural and Environmental Design at the University of Nottingham and won with her final year project entitled ‘Smart windows – A window for dynamic control.’ 

In addition we also present a trophy to a representative of the university as acknowledgement of its achievement.  Dr Yupeng Wu is here to receive the trophy.

•  The Happold Brilliant Award Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME)

This is an annual award to recognise excellence in the teaching of building services engineering. The trophy was received by Lieutenant Colonel Steve Lumley on behalf of the University.

• Ken Dale Travel Bursary Luke Ramsay

Luke Ramsey

The Ken Dale Travel Bursary, now in its seventh year, is made possible by the kind donation of the family of the late Ken Dale, a past President of the Institution of Heating and Ventilating and an Honorary Fellow of CIBSE.  The Bursary makes awards available to CIBSE members at the development stage of their career who wish to spend three to four weeks outside their own country researching aspects connected to their field of work and which will benefit CIBSE, their employer, their clients and the profession of building services engineering.  

Luke Ramsay from Julie’s Bicycle investigated ‘Low carbon cooling in data-centres: barriers and opportunities’ by visiting these various data centres, this helped Luke to begin to understand how data centres can reduce their carbon footprint.

Luke visited various locations across North America, including Canada, Dubai, Jakarta and Singapore. 

• Technical Awards 

The Institution will be making two awards for technical papers published in the Building Services Engineering Research & Technology.

The awards this year are:  

• The Napier Shaw Bronze Medal 

Awarded for the most highly rated paper published in BSER&T in the year relating to research. "Building tight – ventilating right? How are new air tightness standards affecting indoor air quality in dwellings?” Authors - Stirling Howieson, Tim Sharpe and Paul Farren 

• The Carter Bronze Medal 

Awarded for the most highly rated paper published in BSER&T in the year relating to application and development. ‘ A review on predicted mean vote and adaptive thermal comfort models’ Authors – Yau Yat Huang and Chew Bee Teng 

• CIBSE Medals 

Silver Medal presented to Christopher Northey citation being read by Steve Vaughan 

Silver Medal presented to Kevin Kelly citation being read by David Doherty

Silver Medal is presented to John Anderson the citation being read by Gerard Hosford

On the 15th I attended the B&ES Indoor air quality meeting which I will be separately blogging on, so any comments would be appreciated.

Saturday 24th October was the YEN Annual Ball in Birmingham. The Council House Banqueting Suite supplied a fantastic backdrop for the Gatsby themed evening which saw around 150 guests, many of who were dressed accordingly. 

The raffle for the evening raised £1000 which was for the Acorns Children Hospice which offers respite for parents of sick and disabled children. A video of Josh’s story was shown depicting the great works of this charity.

Unfortunately the day job prevented me getting to the Patrons meeting in Leeds. Held with the support of the Yorkshire region, the meeting was at Leeds Beckett University. Along with a tour of the university, there was a very electrical theme with Apollo lighting, DALI Schneider and SLL.

The Imtech world is still very busy and I look forward to seeing a tender with a realistic budget! 

Until next month