GWP Achieve First Outstanding Rating for BREEAM 2011 Using IES TaP
(PRWEB UK) 9 October 2013 -- Denton Holme Student Village, University of Cumbria has earned the first BREEAM 2011 Outstanding Rating. The project led by GWP Project Services used IES TaP as its online project management tool to keep the design team focussed and on track to achieve the Outstanding rating.
Recently named as BREEAM Assessor of the year 2013, GWP Director Barry Rankin said, “The way IES TaP helped us to solve problems and keep to deadline meant we were right on track to achieve the first Outstanding rating for BREEAM 2011.”
Explaining the challenge he said, “Not only did the first phase of the development, consisting of 30 three-storey townhouses, in keeping with the residential location, have to be completed within just eight months before the start of the academic year, but BREEAM, the world’s leading assessment method for sustainable buildings, had just updated its 2008 criteria.” He adds, “We had to quickly educate the entire design team on what was required to meet the new 2011 standard, and get them to submit the required evidence to gain enough credits in time.”
“It quickly became apparent that there was an issue with our energy strategy. Whereas we only needed to achieve an Energy Performance Rating of A under the old criteria, we now needed to deliver a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions against 2010 building regulations.” He adds, “Comparing previous Outstanding builds against the new criteria showed they were only delivering half the CO2 reduction required.”
Solving the problem required co-ordinating the efforts of a widespread number of specialists. By using IES TaP to co-ordinate feedback from a wide range of boiler and energy specialists, to electrical and mechanical engineers, GWP were able to quickly identify that Alpha boilers, which use waste heat from the flu to raise the temperature of incoming cold water, reduced emissions to the extent required within the existing budget and design.
“As the deadline for completing the first phase was fast approaching, IES TaP proved essential to keeping everyone focused on achieving their credits,” said Rankin. “In the past people used to turn up to meetings and have to be reminded of the evidence they were behind with. Now, thanks to the way IES TaP enables us to set deadlines and automatically chases people on our behalf, nearly everyone comes to meetings prepared, enabling us to spend our time giving advice and guidance on how to achieve compliance, rather than chasing people for information.”
He concludes, “At the same time, IES TaP has made the entire BREEAM assessment process much more efficient and profitable. Clients are delighted with the high ratings we’re achieving on their behalf and now that IES TaP has been awarded the BREEAM badge of recognition we can export content from the tool directly to BRE without having to produce a separate report, saving even more time. The result is that our assessors can take on more projects than they could before, enabling us to increase profits.”
To read the full case study go to http://www.iesve.com/software/showcase/3464/University+of+Cumbria+Student+Village.
Suzanne Livingstone, Integrated Environmental Solutions Limit, +44 1419458500 8574, [email protected]
Share this article