CIBSE President's Blog

It’s been just over a month since I took up the role of CIBSE President and it’s been a busy and exciting time. As part of my presidential address and in celebration of CIBSE’s 125 anniversary, I launched the #CIBSE125Challenges . The aim of the Challenges is to encourage action, communication and collaboration. It’s important that we celebrate and support those who are beginning their careers but also champion and raise the profile of engineers throughout their careers. As an institution, CIBSE recognises the vital role that building services engineers play in delivering a safe and sustainable future. The Challenges are a vehicle for celebrating role models, icons, mentors, achievements and sharing the lessons we have learnt. I want them to be the spark for igniting imagination, inspiration and action. I’m happy to say that so far, we have had an excellent engagement with the Challenges, including contributions from of Fiona Cousins, Region Chair, Americas – Arup and CIBSE Vice P...

I want to look at ways in which our world is changing. Not just our world in general, but the world of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning; the world of comfort and lighting and air quality in buildings; the world of building performance. Technological innovations are rapidly changing many aspects of our work and our lives. Forecasts suggest that one in seven jobs could soon be automated, and we have seen a rapidly growing interest in both robotics and artificial intelligence. The breakneck pace of AI and automation see changes to our workforce we couldn’t have imagined, with some experts saying that 65% of students starting early education will work in jobs that are about to die out. Our environment is also changing, at least in part due to our own impacts. Innovators in green tech are racing against a different kind of clock, one that affects the entire natural world. In 2017 global energy related CO 2 emissions reached a record 32.5 gigatonnes, whilst climate related...

It’s been a busy couple of months since my inauguration as president at the CIBSE AGM in May. I have been working closely with the CIBSE board, staff and volunteers to make sure that the aims and actions we take are clear and effective. From right to left: CIBSE Vice President Kevin Kelly, Immediate Past President Peter Wong, President Elect Lynn Jack, President Stephen Lisk, Vice President Ashley Bateson and Vice President Stuart MacPherson at the CIBSE AGM In my inaugural address,  Adapt to Change,  I outlined some of the challenges facing our industry and wider society. The last few years have been tumultuous, with little sign of calmer seas ahead and I believe that with our collective experience and knowledge CIBSE must lead change as a globally recognised force for good. It is time to take stock and assess what we, as an institution and a profession are trying to achieve. In doing this, I believe we can gain a better understanding of how to maintain and grow our...

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...