This white paper focuses on the performance gap in UK construction, particularly within housing.
As part of A. Proctor Group’s technical presentations, a round table discussion took place featuring a panel of UK construction industry experts who explored why the performance gap exists and how the issue might be solved.
Contributors
- Tom Cox – Construction Solution Director, Saint-Gobain UK & I
- Iain Fairnington – Technical Director, A. Proctor Group Ltd
- Stewart Little – CEO, IRT Surveys Ltd
- Raymond McGurk – CEO, BRS Group
- Keira Proctor – Managing Director – A. Proctor Group Ltd (Host)
Summary
Why Do We Treat Different Areas of Building Performance Differently?
Performance gaps can exist in all areas of building design and construction. Any shortfall between a building’s in-use performance and the designer or specifier’s intent is a performance gap. The term is most commonly applied to energy efficiency, where academic studies have found typical underperformance to be around 30%.
However, performance gaps are not exclusive to energy efficiency. Fire safety is another area that has received much greater scrutiny in recent years, and that scrutiny should not go away. The introduction of new legislation, standards, and guidance to address fire safety shortfalls shows how damaging performance gaps can be.
A significant difference between fire safety and energy efficiency is that fire safety is very difficult to test in a finished building. Critical strategies built into a building will only be proven in the rare event of a fire. At that point, identifying a performance gap is too late.
For this reason, the new building safety regime is taking steps to address the design, specification, and installation of fire safety measures before a building is used, as well as improving the flow of information throughout the building’s life. Unfortunately, energy efficiency is not yet subject to the same approach.
We have the tools to calculate and predict energy use and carbon emissions during the design phase, and there are ways to measure and quantify the performance of buildings in use. The “test” element of “design-build-test” could be considered the most important.
However, with legally binding net zero targets to achieve, we should also ask why the design and build elements of energy efficiency are not subject to a similar level of scrutiny to that now seen in fire safety.
The Distance Between the Drawing Board and Site
A common theme among the round table contributors was that they had seen the construction industry from a variety of angles. This wide-ranging experience led to a well-informed discussion on performance gaps in energy efficiency. Both Iain Fairnington and Stewart Little spoke about the contrasting attitudes they encountered in design roles, while working for manufacturers, and during time spent on site. Early in their careers, they questioned what they saw on site compared with the design drawings, only to be told that there was not enough time to do it that way and that the priority was simply to get it done.
From a manufacturing perspective, the contributors identified two key lessons when offering products to the market. First, selling a specification is relatively easy, but ensuring that the specification is maintained in the final build is much harder. Second, describing a product as “foolproof” is risky, because if there is a wrong way to install something, someone will find it.
In Tom Cox’s longstanding career with a single manufacturer, he has seen his role change as energy efficiency regulations have changed. An initial focus on the performance of individual components developed into solutions based on combinations of components to deliver elemental U-values. He now looks at how those solutions and systems can be combined to deliver building-level performance focused on the end user.
This kind of holistic thinking is where the construction industry should be, but it is not yet fully there. It highlights the distance between what is designed and specified, and what is actually built.
The Construction Industry Also Does Things Well
With forty years of experience across all stages of design and construction, Raymond McGurk was keen to emphasise that the industry is not all bad. However, just as problems are rarely identified, there is also a lack of celebration when something is done well.
The only way for both problems and successes to have more influence on the industry’s day-to-day work is through more monitoring and feedback. Without this, developments will continue to meet energy efficiency requirements on paper, but those calculations will not reflect the real end use of the building.