CIBSE President's Blog

CIBSE President Nick Mead reflects on a month of new projects for the Institution The second month of my presidency has been marked by a real opportunity to get stuck into the nuts and bolts of running CIBSE, all around my day job too! I have attended several key governance meetings over the course of this month including the Council, the finance subcommittee and the nominations committee. All a reminder of the tremendous amount of work that goes into running an organisation as large and diverse as CIBSE. I also had plenty of external meetings, building on the theme of collaboration that I hope will define my term as President. Round two of the ‘Three Presidents’ debate between myself and the presidents of RIBA and B&ES took place on the 22 June at RIBA’s offices in London, in a rather more confrontational ‘Question Time’ style than the last. Despite some disagreement over exactly what is holding buildings back (is it old hierarchies, increasing complexity or reluctance to...

CIBSE’s newly inaugurated President Nick Mead shares an overview of his first month in office, and sets out some priorities for the future. Welcome everyone to the first of my Presidential blogs, covering my year of office between 2015 and 2016. It’s been a month since I took office, and we have got off to a flying start. I have been looking forward to implementing my primary theme of collaboration, and I have already had the opportunity to talk more about it at over 10 major events so far. And they said it would be easy! I thought I was on the back foot from the start, running against the General Election for attention at the AGM, but I couldn’t have asked for a better welcome at the Royal Academy of Engineering. It was here that I was able to set out my vision of a braver industry more interested in working together and breaking down silos. I also got the chance to formally meet the board and staff at our May away day, a great opportunity to have a conversation about how...

New guidance on urban planting shows how innovative solutions and collaborative working can be effective in mitigating the effects of climate change in our cities. CIBSE’s Immediate Past President, George Adams, discusses the Adaptive Cities special interest group which is currently being established and the latest guidance being issued by the Trees and Design Action Group. CIBSE is establishing a new Adaptive Cities special interest group and as part of this action we are now a firmly established member of the Trees and Design Action Group (TDAG) and contributed to the TDAG's latest publication Trees in Hard Landscapes: A Guide for Delivery ( freely available on their website). "Hardly a street could not be improved, if someone would give thought to planting the right trees in the right places… (in) new development there will be a chance for growing trees in areas almost treeless until now. This book describes various ways whereby trees can be used, at relat...

I'd like to kick off 2014 looking at the role and importance of Facilities Management, particularly in dealing with the impacts of climate change. So I'm sharing an extract of an article I wrote on the subject, which originally appeared in FM Magazine We'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject, please do comment whether here or on LinkedIn. There's been fantastic debate taking place on social media in response to the blog subjects, thank you all for contributing. The built environment is hugely important to UK business and to our social requirements. Equally so are the essential reductions in carbon emissions required by the Government’s target of 80% within the next 36 years. Buildings affect people’s health, security, productivity and overall lifestyles. As they become increasingly complex and modern systems and operators become more focused on in-use performance levels, then building services engineers must play an important part in ensuring their efficient ...

In recent weeks I met with RIBA on behalf of CIBSE and this has opened up the pathway to working together on strategic issues for the built environment. In my discussions with new RIBA president Stephen Hodder, important areas for development were identified as collaboration, sustainability and the cities challenge. In this blog I challenge how we put this into action. A few weeks ago I was walking with my wife in my beloved home city of London. We were on our way to a marvellous Rumford Club evening function at the House of Lords and as I passed through Parliament Square I was reminded of the awesome sustainability of the fabulous historic buildings. This led me to ponder the fact that the surrounding spectacular buildings have been there for hundreds of years and will be for hundreds more, won't they? The very same thought came to mind as I read the latest copy of National Geographic where I see, in graphic detail, the maps of the world demonstrating the change in coast line...

President George Adams wonders whether lawmakers are doing their bit in responding to and mitigating the consequences of climate change. He points out the law, both national and international gives permission to governments, organisations and investors to take from the earth's resources but does not have a provision to create a balance that prevents the potential worst effects of climate change. This led me to think of the part building services engineers can play; we aren't lawmakers but how we can best contribute to achieving this balance and how we should best try to influence legislation? Clearly building services engineers play an important part contributing to achieving this balance by designing services installations that minimise energy use. However we usually think of minimising emissions as simply improving the operational efficiency with the ultimate goal of “Zero Energy Buildings”, i.e. zero net energy consumption and zero carbon emissions annually. The zero net e...

The way in which the global population consumes energy is not sustainable, both in terms of quantity and efficiency. However, it must be considered that future population growth and consequently energy demand will come largely from developing nations. These developing nations will suffer the most from the climate change caused mainly by developed countries, which have previously taken full advantage of excessive and unrestrained consumption of fossil fuels. Perhaps, rather than imposing an international law, which may hinder the already unstable economic development of least developed countries, it could be proposed that improvement of the CDM mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol and guidance on country specific regional subsidiaries in relation to renewable energy and sustainable government frameworks could enhance the carbon reduction strategies in time to meet the growing energy demand of these developing nations. However, providing better access to renewable energy is not the ...