IES Blog

A few weeks back, the Boston Chapter of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) held a speaker session to investigate the topic of weather and building simulation. This seminar was Part 2 of the IBPSA’s “Big Uglies”. The “Big Uglies” represent four of the major unknowns in energy modelling: Occupancy, Plug Loads, Weather and Infiltration.

The group discussion was designed to tackle the impact of weather on building simulation and covered the following topics – “options for obtaining weather files for building simulation, the affects of weather on simulation results, future weather files, and related practices”.

This event caught my eye as climate and its impact on performance analysis has been on the IES agenda for a while now. Richard Quincey, Technical Director at IES explains, “To be truly sustainable, a building needs to last in excess of 100 years, and current design regulations and sustainability rating systems only require you to design against weather data that represents at best the next decade or so. Sustainable designs really need to make some assessment of the impact of climate change on determining built form suitability for the long term.”

With climate change becoming a global reality, why risk the long term performance of your building by ignoring it? A building may perform well today but it may not be able to adapt with the impact of future adverse weather conditions.

In January we teamed up with the University of Exeter to assist with their Prometheus Weather Files project. The weather files are available in .epw format for 35 locations around the UK for the 2030s, 2050s and 2080s across both high and medium emissions scenarios. The files are fully compatible with the IESVE allowing designers, architects and engineers to future weather-proof buildings and undertake comparisons between performance today and in future decades. The files are free and can be downloaded from our website.

Richard Quincey (IES) and Dr. Tristan Kershaw of the University of Exeter presented the project at this year’s Ecobuild. Highlights from the session are available in the video below.

No Comments

Tags:Boston, Building, climate, IES, Modeling, Sustainability, weather files

The United States Conference of Mayors recent Clean Energy Solutions for America’s Cities report is a summary of survey results. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are more than 1,200 such cities in the country today, each represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the Mayor.

I’ll admit, I was a bit worried to dive into the report, with visions of a glum outlook and details that reflect why this cities are not sustainable.

But I’d say things are looking pretty good!

If you want to read the entire report, you can download it here.

But the key findings sum things up quite well.

• Despite challenging economic conditions, three in four cities (75%) expect their deployment of clean energy technologies to increase over the next five years.

• Cities identify financial constraints as the most significant challenge to improving energy efficiency and conservation, and developing new renewable energy supplies.

• LED and other efficient lighting (76%), low-energy building technologies (68%), and solar systems to generate electricity (46%) are the top three choices among mayors as the most promising technologies for reducing energy use and carbon emissions.

• Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) are shown to have multiple benefits for cities, from helping to cope with higher gas prices to deploying new energy technologies and efficiency measures, now and in the future.

• Mayors point to the economic benefits of clean energy solutions as key drivers of their energy strategies.

• For one in three cities, adapting to climate change is already an element of their capital planning and/or capital improvement programs.

• One-quarter of all cities have already set targets for the use of renewable energy.

What do you think? Are our major cities on a path to a sustainable future? How can we ensure we get there? I certainly think implementing “smart” solutions within commercial buildings is a fool-proof way to ensure energy hogs such as lights and HVAC systems are kept in check, without the need for extra manpower (and extra expenses) to keep tabs during peak demand times throughout the day. But that’s just a small piece of the puzzle. There’s so much more we can do in the world of sustainable design, and we are just scratching the surface

My hope is to view this report 5, 10 years from now and see an even greater move towards sustainability.

No Comments

Tags:Building, Clean Energy Solutions, climate, HVAC, Renewables, Sustainability

Building Information Modeling, or BIM, is the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle. And in a recent article, RIBA Construction Strategy Group’s (and the government’s chief construction adviser) Paul Morrell noted that the time for BIM is now and evolving to make architects “integrators of projects.” He stated, “BIM technology could herald the return of architects to the role of master builder”.

Last week I attended a webinar entitled “BIM – A new way of working”, which featured Mr. Morrell, as he continued to explore the future impact of BIM on our industry.  A playback of the webinar can be found here.

Let’s take a step back for a second, though, shall we? As I was Googling to see if there were any additional sound bytes from Mr. Morrell regarding the subject, I came across this article on ‘Breaking Down the Walls.’ The post, entitled, “BIM – What is it, why do I care, and how do I do it?” was written over six years ago, but I think what Matt touches on still rings true today.

First, emphasis needs to be placed on the “I” in “BIM” - “Information”. That information can be either graphical or non-graphical, either contained directly in the building model or accessible from the building model through linked data that is stored elsewhere. If you really think about it, in some ways, at a basic level “BIM” doesn’t necessarily require that the geometry that describes the building be a 3D model at all.

That being said, BIM is an important component of architectural design, especially as architects continue to have to meet sustainable benchmarks such as Part L of the Building Regulations and Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). The idea is whole-building analysis, getting a sense of the building at the earliest stages of design to truly develop the best building possible.

As Mr. Morrell notes, using BIM, architects can become “integrators” and that’s exactly the goal we are going for – integrated design throughout the entire process.

1 Comment

Tags:Architects, BIM, EPCs, Part L, Sustainability

Being a member of the IES team I always find it very intriguing to find out how our software is being used across the world and I enjoy reading about projects we have been part of. From museums to Mosques, airports to theatres, we have notched up some interesting case studies along the way. The latest of these case studies to join our IES Showcase is the Central Karakoram National Park.

E + +, an expert company in energy technology, focused on renewable sources and energy efficiency, and ILA studio architects, have worked together to successfully evaluate and improve the energy efficiency of an integrated environmental design for the proposed head office building of the Central Karakorum National Park in Pakistan. Using the IES Virtual Environment (IES VE) the analysis allowed them to assess the actual sustainability of the model and the possible improvements that could be made to make it a much more energy efficient and high performing design.

The Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) is one of the most important parks in Pakistan, bordering China, Afghanistan and India. In order to promote sustainable development of the area, the Italian Committee Ev-K2-CNR, through the SEED project, is working in the region to support the deployment and management of the park and improve the quality of life and livelihoods of local people. Among the key focuses of the project is the design of a new sustainable headquarters building for the park.

To ensure the energy efficiency of the building, E++ and ILA Studio worked in collaboration to analyse the predicted energy usage of the building right from the early stages of the design process. Taking in to account climatic and environmental considerations, they carried out the analysis using using VE-Pro modules MacroFlo, ApacheSim, ApacheHVAC and ApacheCalc.

To read the full story on this project click here. You can also visit our website to view our Case Study Showcase.

No Comments

Tags:Building, E + +, IES, Modeling, software, Sustainability

We’re proud to call San Francisco home to one of our North American offices. We’ve always loved the unique architecture and the unparalleled atmosphere of the city by the Bay.

But now there’s another reason for us to love this city a little more. San Francisco has been named the ‘greenest city in America’ by the Economist Intelligence Unit as part of the ongoing Green Cities Index research project.

The chart below shows the areas in which the 27 cities were evaluated.

Looking at the various facets these cities were judged on, I can’t help but smile. Every day, I work with companies to help design low-energy, high performance buildings utilizing our performance analysis products. To see that it’s making a difference in the output of large commercial buildings in some of the greatest cities in this country makes me realize that what we are doing is not just about designing buildings to be pretty. It’s about reducing energy consumption and making buildings as efficient as possible for the long haul. Large commercial buildings in these cities are going to be around for many, many years to come, and it’s our goal to build them to not only last that long, but to be icons of the future of building.

This is an exciting time for our industry! We can’t wait to see all the cities on the list (and more) with scores in the 80s.

If you’re interested in all the specifics, the full report can be downloaded here.

No Comments

Tags:Green Building, IES, San Francisco

Last week our Software Development Director, Pete Thompson, returned from the 10th International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) Symposium. Pete, who is now a regular attendee of this yearly event, is the creator of Simulex, our tool which enables you to define a building and its occupants, and simulate how they move around a building day-to-day and evacuate during an emergency. The event was hosted by the Department of Fire Protection Engineering and took place in College Park, Maryland, USA.

With over 400 scientists and engineers attending the Symposium, it offers a great networking opportunity as IES continues to push into the North American market. While in the states Pete met with Don, our Managing Director, who is in the middle of a 4 country, 9 city, 32 day, 18 flight N.American & Asia trip. That’s a lot of timezones!

While at the event Pete was asked to co-chair a workshop examining how science and computing power feed into the process of modern building design and approval. The aim of the session was to “facilitate discussions between experimentalists (advancing the basic science & data), developers, users, and regulators to increase the information flow between the disciplines and attempt to focus minds on common areas of concern and benefit”. The workshop, entitled “Fire & Escape Modeling – from bits and bytes to safe buildings”, is available in the PowerPoint slides below, and they also contain links to the other discussions which took place during this block of sessions.

No Comments

Tags:Discussion, Engineers, fire safety, IES, Modeling, safety, software, USA

This month the IES social media helpdesk has had some questions from users about how they can speed up the drawing process when creating your model with ModelIT. Well fear not loyal users as Gary Nixon, from our Dublin office, has compiled the following hints and tips videos to help you become more efficient when using ModelIT. As always, if you would like your question to feature in a future Q & AEC Blog head to our Facebook, Twitter or email me at john.goucher@iesve.com.

Stamping your model

Drawing over a DXF in elevation view

No Comments

Tags:aec, IES, Modeling