CIBSE President's Blog

New CIBSE President Peter Y Wong presents his first monthly presidential blog following his inauguration last month, in which he takes a look at what the 30th anniversary of CIBSE ANZ means for the Institution. Welcome to my first President’s blog of my term – I hope that you find it useful. This blog will be a monthly insight into my intended path for the Institution, and will hopefully be an interesting perspective on issues affecting the engineering industry as a whole from the first Hong Kong President of CIBSE. In my Presidential address that I delivered at my inauguration, I listed reaching out to the world as one of my top priorities. CIBSE can only be as big and effective as its membership – it’s the members that create the knowledge and uphold our principles.  It should be our wish and our mission to share these with others in and beyond our membership - all over the world. So it seems appropriate that my first blog is about my visit to the CIBSE Australia and N...

In this month's President's Blog,  CIBSE President John Field  takes a look back at two presentations delivered during the ASHRAE Winter Conference and at a CIBSE Scotland/SLL meeting, discussing  performance, big data and modelling. In the last few weeks, I've been lucky enough to see a series of fascinating presentations on performance, control, feedback, BIM and big data, so I'm going to go through two of them now. Alastair MacGregor, Vice President AECOM The first was by Alastair MacGregor, Vice President AECOM Los Angeles, at Tim Dwyer's excellent workshop during the ASHRAE Winter Conference. It concerned "third generation" sports arena design - in this case for the Sacramento Kings basketball team. T he first-generation was passive design supported by brute force plant, the second generation was design for peak demand and the third generation is performance driven.  Well the Sacramento arena has a capacity of 17,000 and they are al...

In this month's President's Blog, CIBSE President John Field takes a look back at the Conference and Exhibition and asks - 'Have we got our priorities straight? In the first blog of a new year it’s traditional to have a look back at the year that came before, and take a look forward at the year ahead – so I’m going to start off with a quick word about November’s Conference and Exhibition. It has become one of the biggest honours in a CIBSE President’s term to preside over the yearly Conference, where we get to demonstrate the wealth of knowledge, experience and innovation within the ranks of the building services engineering community, and this year’s was the biggest and most exciting that I have attended. Naturally, Building Performance was the focus of the event (it’s in the name after all!) and the issue of how we can create new buildings and reform existing ones in order to make them kinder to the environment and their occupants was a thread that ran through every ...

In this month's President's blog in the run-up to Tomorrow's Engineers Week , John Field takes a look at an unusual new engineering competition for young people - and explores what it means for the teaching of engineering, and the future of talent in the industry At the Joint CIBSE-ASHRAE seminar this month we had the pleasure of listening to a presentation by ASHRAE President Prof Tim Wentz, who introduced us to an engineering course at the University of Wisconsin by saying “"A hands-on approach is how students learn, and is almost always the most effective way of teaching". This, I think, touches on a very important issue with the way we introduce young people to Engineering. As a profession we’re competing for talent with other high-profile careers ranging from medicine to banking and finance, who do a very good job of demonstrating the virtues of their fields. Engineering, meanwhile, has something of an image problem and is seen as decidedly dull in co...

Do you Like your office? Do you like your office? When I say ‘like’ I don’t mean appreciate or ‘enjoy’, I mean do you Like it with a big, blue Facebook thumb? Such questions have got a bad rap in recent years. The ‘Like’ is seen as the ultimate superficial gesture, the epitome of ‘slacktivism’ and a meaningless affirmative in place of actual thought or expression. But, in the right hands, a Like could make an awful lot of difference, and could even change the world. A Like is really just a data point, and it doesn’t mean an awful lot when you’re talking about a friend’s holiday photos, but applied to buildings ratings can make a lot of difference both in the short and long term. The world’s biggest companies boast of their Likes online and jostle for your attention because it shows their product is good and authentic. This model has a lot of potential with buildings: We’ve been used to measuring the energy efficiency of buildings for years, but the problem is engagement. Landl...

We have had a little time to reflect in the month since the Brexit vote but regardless of the result, we still have a lot of work to do to meet the UK’s ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions. The referendum outcome had barely even sunk in when, on 30th June, the government committed to the emissions reductions recommended by the Committee on Climate Change to reduce the UK’s carbon output by 57% relative to 1990 levels by 2030. In the light of this, it is even more important than ever that CIBSE and its members work collaboratively as we address the consequences of the vote to leave. It is reassuring to see that the engineering sector reacted swiftly to the vote and the Royal Academy of Engineering has already established a group to look at the potential consequences for the sector, especially in the UK. Prior success has been led by reducing emissions by generation   ©Paul Glazzard My colleague at CIBSE Hywel Davies has written a detailed and informative summary ...

Last month, it was almost exactly a year since The Edge published their ‘Collaboration for Change’ report ; something that CIBSE has been heavily involved in under my predecessor Nick Mead, Vice-President Paddy Conaghan and now myself. The report, written by Paul Morrell, was an insightful look at the areas of Ethics, Research, Education, the Performance Gap, Industry reform and Climate Change – and how collaboration between professional bodies can advance the whole industry in these areas. For me, the report was particularly eye-opening in the way it discussed the effect that the industry could have on Government policy and the wider community if only we can maximise the potential of working together. He should know: He’s the former Government Chief Construction Advisor, and what he had to say in the report was a big influence on my own theme for my Presidency – raising the voice of Engineering in society. The ‘performance gap’ side of the report was thrown into focus last month b...