Why Brick Continues To Be The Most Sustainable Of Materials

Simon Hay, CEO of the Brick Development Association (BDA), takes a closer look at how the Brick Industry is delivering a sustainable future.

The International Energy Agency has targeted a reduction of 77 percent of the global carbon footprint by 2050 as necessary to achieve climate stabilisation.To meet that goal, existing and future buildings — which today account for as much as 40 percent of global energy consumption — must become more energy efficient.

More and more, retrofits and renovations of existing buildings are viewed as opportunities to achieve significant and cost-effective carbon reductions. With that in mind, it is likely that regulations regarding energy efficiency of existing buildings are becoming more stringent. Over the next two years in the United Kingdom alone, an estimated £3 million will be spent to determine the best methods for retrofitting existing housing stock. Indeed, according to the British government, ensuring all 26 million U.K.homes are energy efficient by 2050 will require retrofitting 40,000 homes a year
by 2015 and a staggering 1.8 million homes a year by 2020.

In meeting these goals, however, building owners, regulators and financiers continue to face major technical and cost challenges. Identifying the best retrofit candidates, conducting large-scale asset rating, and profiling large building portfolios for their performance are just some of these challenges. In this article, we examine why traditional approaches to measuring and managing energy usage within existing buildings are insufficient. In addition, we assess and evaluate “rapid energy modelling,” a new technologydriven workflow with the potential to enable building performance analysis to be applied to existing buildings in a scalable way.

Alternative Approaches
Architects, engineers, building owners, regulators and financiers – varying in size and degree of green expertise, have revealed in interviews that energy benchmarking falls short of the insight they need to baseline building energy performance. They were pleased to learn that technology has advanced to the point where such benchmarking exercises could be augmented with the ability to easily capture existing conditions and quickly create energy models before choosing and validating, in a model-based environment, the energy and cost implications of different design alternatives…in other words, rapid energy modelling.

Regrettably, traditional energy modelling capabilities are often restricted to larger-budget projects. This is primarily because several months typically pass before the necessary information to guide design and retrofit process of the existing building can be delivered.

Building audits can provide crucial perspectives on the operational details of a building, but are usually prohibitively time consuming and expensive, requiring travel and significant investment of time on the part of auditors and their clients. In short, audits provide optimal value only if they are targeted at buildings with already recognized
potential for improved energy performance.

The Solution: Rapid Energy Modelling
Through the use of a broad selection of software solutions — including Autodesk Revit Architecture, Autodesk Revit MEP, Autodesk Green Building Studio, Autodesk ImageModeler (available on Autodesk Subscription), as well as technology previews available on Autodesk Labs, including Project Vasari and Project Photofly — workflows constituting the broader rapid energy modelling umbrella help address the aforementioned challenges.

Just like it sounds, rapid energy modelling involves moving quickly, with minimal data, from existing building conditions through simple simulations to building energy analysis. While the umbrella term encompasses a number of workflows, it typically consists of the following three steps:
1. Capture: Capture existing building conditions in the form of photos, satellite images or 2D plans. Transform them into a wireframe, using reference measurements or geospatial and structural information.
2. Model: Convert the wireframe into a 3D model with Autodesk Building Information Modeling software, using either of the following modelling techniques:
a. Conceptual modelling, using massing (with conceptual energy analysis features available to Autodesk Revit Architecture and Autodesk Revit MEP Subscription customers during the term of their Subscription)
b. Detailed modelling, using design elements such as walls, floors, windows, roof and room/space (with Autodesk Revit Architecture or Autodesk Revit MEP)
3. Simulate and Analyze: Use Autodesk Green Building Studio to produce detailed reports on energy consumption, carbon neutrality and renewable potential. Models created using conceptual modelling can be simulated inside the native Revit environment with conceptual energy analysis features and later (optionally) fine-tuned in Autodesk Green Building Studio.

Realising the Benefits
A major benefit of rapid energy modelling for existing buildings is time savings, which in the construction industry translates to financial savings. Being able to capture existing building conditions, create an intelligent 3D model and conduct energy analysis faster helps nondomestic property owners better identify buildings with the greatest potential for energy and carbon emissions savings, at lower cost, in less time. Rapid energy modelling offers financiers, regulators, insurers and real estate brokers a more streamlined method of determining an existing building’s “asset rating” — a more precise metric of a building’s environmental quality, based on design that influences sales prices, lease rates and insurance rates.Contractors, architects and designers can also evaluate the lifecycle impact of their retrofit decisions in just a few hours and with minimal data. What’s more, the process can help building owners, facility managers, tenants and real estate developers prioritise retrofit investments and related energy-efficiency measures. Finally, rapid energy modelling can help building owners, property managers and tenants to evaluateentire building portfolios.

A rapid energy modelling workflow helps supplement energy benchmarking by enabling building professionals to quickly and easily iterate numerous design alternatives to better assess the energy and carbon footprinting implications. At the same time, the workflow augments, refines and focuses traditional on-site building energy audits, typically complex and time-consuming processes that require highly skilled
energy auditors.

Testing the Process
Although gaining acceptance and achieving increased adoption in the United States, rapid energy modelling is still in its infancy in Europe. Relevant technologies and software solutions are now in place, however, as is the methodology and workflow behind them. The market potential is huge. A process of education and awareness building is now in place to increase knowledge levels across the industry and showcase how owners can exercise greater control over buildings, together with wider opportunities to drive cost savings and enhance their green credentials through reductions in carbon
emissions.

The various workflows of rapid energy modelling have been road tested in experiments conducted by or involving Autodesk, professional services firms such as ICF International, and Clear Carbon by Deloitte.
The workflows have also been piloted with external projects, such as those conducted at URS-Scott Wilson, a globally integrated design and engineering consultancy for the built and natural environments in the United Kingdom, and at DPR Construction, a leading general contractor in the United States, specialising in technically complex and sustainable projects.

In Conclusion
Adoption of rapid energy modelling techniques can help significantly increase the number of existing buildings undergoing energy assessments and subsequent upgrades within a smaller budget and shorter time frame. There is considerable interest in the building community to streamline the modelling process. Building owners and tenants; designers, architects and contractors; property managers and real estate brokers; and regulators and financiers are just some of the stakeholders likely to benefit from this groundbreaking approach. The benefits derived from streamlining assessments of energy usage and driving savings from enhanced energy efficiency will be increasingly compelling for the demands of a lowcarbon built environment.

To learn more about the Autodesk rapid energy modelling workflow, visit www.autodesk.com/rem.