Environmental design : incorporating a rating tool into the design of commercial buildings

Environmental performance assessment or green building rating tools for commercial buildings are one of the more recent responses to encourage green solutions for commercial buildings. This paper discusses the initial stages of a research project that looks at the impact of a rating tool, such as Green Star, on design. There are numerous ways in which an architect can design commercial buildings, but environmental design solutions have consistently failed to become accepted practice. Therefore, how will this tool be incorporated into the building design process? Developed to assist the designer can the inclusion of a rating tool such as Green Star provide an effective framework to encourage the inclusion of environmental design strategies in commercial buildings? A field study, recording the design process of a commercial building, anticipates that a whole building assessment approach towards design, as proposed through the Green Star Rating Tool, will provide an effective framework to set and monitor design targets in order to optimise the environmental design goals in commercial buildings.

Estimating the increasing cost of commercial buildings in Australia due to greenhouse emissions trading

The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by most industrial nations will result in an international greenhouse emissions trading market by or before 2008. Calculating the quantity of embodied energy in commercial buildings has therefore taken on added significance because it is in the creation of energy that most greenhouse gas that causes global warming is released. For energy efficient commercial buildings in Australia, the embodied energy can typically represent between 10 and 20 years of operational energy. When greenhouse emissions trading is introduced in Australia the cost of energy will rise significantly, particularly electricity which relies primarily on burning fossil fuels for generation. This will affect not only the operating energy costs of buildings (light, power & heating/cooling) but also the cost of building materials and construction. Early estimates of the potential cost of future greenhouse emission permits in Australia vary between $IO/tonne to $180Itonne. This cost would be imposed primarily on the producers of energy and passed on by them to consumers via higher energy costs. For a typical commercial building this could lead to an increase in the total procurement cost of buildings of up to 20% due to the energy embodied during the construction or refurbishment of the building. To assist in evaluating these potential cost increases McKean & Park, Sinclair Knight Merz and Deakin University have developed a web-based Carbon Cost Calculator for commercial buildings.

Valuation of sustainable commercial buildings

Valuation is critical to sustainability take-up in commercial buildings because the combined monetary value of the building and land, as identified in the valuation process, remains an important consideration for many stakeholders. These stakeholders include investors and owners who refer to the market value on behalf of their shareholders, as well as financiers who rely on the value for lending purposes.

This article examines the valuation of sustainable commercial buildings and why it requires a broader consideration of what constitutes value, compared with 'traditional' valuation processes. Definitions relevant to the valuation of sustainable commercial buildings are listed, and the importance of sustainable buildings to the broader property industry is emphasised. The article covers traditional valuation methodology and how sustainability is included in each of the valuation approaches.

Consideration is given to the globally accepted definition of market value, and what the individual components of the definition refer to. The article outlines opportunities for incorporating sustainability considerations into the valuation process, and examines what the future direction for the valuation of commercial buildings may be.

By increasing knowledge about the approach to valuing sustainable office buildings, this article is designed to benefit three groups:

* It will equip valuers, financiers, investors/owners, and other stakeholders with a better understanding of the varying levels of sustainability, and how sustainability affects the level of risk, and subsequently the value, associated with a commercial building.
* It will allow owners, investors and tenants to appreciate the role of a valuer, their exposure to liability, and their challenging task of assessing the current and future risk, and subsequently the value, of a sustainable commercial building.
* This higher level of understanding should mean that the benefits of sustainability will be fully reflected in the valuation process, therefore contributing to support for those developers and investors who are leading in the provision of sustainable solutions.

Delivering sustainability through the adaptive reuse of commercial buildings : the Melbourne CBD challenge

The City of Melbourne is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2020 (Arup 2008) and have set a target of adapting twelve hundred commercial buildings to incorporate sustainability initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the sector (AECOM 2008). In order to meet this target the City of Melbourne is taking a proactive approach to establish strategies to deliver sustainability in the built environment within the 2020 timeframe. With regards to upgrading and building maintenance 71% of investment is used for such works (Department of the Environment 2008) and the total Australian property stock was worth over $6 trillion in June 2008. Given that building services in commercial buildings typically lasts between 20-30 years and the average age of the stock is 31 years – it appears that many properties are due for adaptation and there is major opportunity for adaptation that alleviates the impact of global warming and climate change.

Uncertainty surfaces such as; how much adaptation of existing stock is typically undertaken? And is the target of 1200 adaptations before 2020 achievable? Furthermore how could the City identify which buildings are most probable to be adapted prior to 2020? This paper details the configuration of a database of Melbourne buildings populated with data about physical, social, economic legislative and environmental attributes. There is a discussion about how the database will be used to determine; how much adaptive reuse has been undertaken historically; if any triggers to adaptation can be identified; and whether any relationships between adaptation physical, social, economic, legislative and environmental attributes and adaptation exist. The relevance of this research is obvious to all policy makers where adaptation of existing commercial buildings is perceived a as key component of delivering sustainability.

Examining and quantifying the drivers behind alterations and extensions to commercial buildings in a central business district

The drive to undertake building adaptation has increased in momentum, the primary reason being adaptation can be less expensive than new build and conventionally result in faster project delivery times. The issue of sustainable development is another clear driver for adaptation and collectively buildings contribute around half of all greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time governments seek effective and efficient ways of reducing the contribution of cities to climate change and building adaptation appears to offer a practical means of reducing building-related emissions. One example is the ‘1200 building program’ which aims to increase adaptation rates with a target of 1200 city centre office adaptations by 2020 as part of the strategy to achieve carbon neutrality. Through a longitudinal examination of building adaptations it is possible to identify the nature and extent of typical levels of adaptation, as well as determining the inter-relationship between different types of adaptation and building attributes. Melbourne city centre was used for a case study which analysed 5290 building adaptation events between 1998 and 2008. The findings promote the adaptive reuse of buildings in specific circumstances and are directly applicable for increasing sustainability in the built environment. The case study focused on existing buildings in a global city to ensure relevance to urban centres where existing commercial buildings can become part of the solution to mitigate climate change.

Form versus function : a study into interactive learning process affecting the implementation of sustainability in commercial buildings

Owners and tenants of sustainable buildings are now realising the sustainable building that they own or occupy and also how they use the building have a significant impact on their work practices. These stakeholders are demanding sustainability outcomes such as improved occupant health and performance, lower energy and material consumption use as well as encouraging healthy ecosystem in their sustainable building. Clearly the level of user knowledge about a sustainable building and its technologies makes a difference about the actual behaviour towards sustainable buildings (Knott 2007, Stenberg 2007) There remains two major challenge faced by sustainable building occupants: (i) addressing the gap between an occupant's expectations of sustainable building outcomes and what the building actually provides and (ii) overcoming the lack of user knowledge about sustainability design and operation for a particular with regards to performance (Jailani et. al, 2011). This is an innovative study designed to address these challenges. It uses a focus group approach to investigate the gap between (a) user expectations and (b) sustainable building performance, with reference to the relationship between interactive learning process and the level of implementation of sustainability in commercial buildings. The outcome from the study will provide a post-occupancy evaluation of the perception of occupants in sustainable buildings. Most importantly, this information can then assist architects and designers in private and government organisations to successfully develop future sustainable design and policy which can fully capitalise on the original intention when delivering sustainable buildings, as well as providing an innovative feedback mechanism between occupiers and architects.

An assessment of the energy and water embodied in commercial building construction

Growing global concern regarding the rapid rate at which humans are consuming the earth’s precious natural resources is leading to greater emphasis on more effective means of providing for our current and future needs. Energy and fresh water are the most crucial of these basic human needs. The energy and water required in the operation of buildings is fairly well known. Much less is known about the energy and water embodied in construction materials and products. It has been suggested that embodied energy typically represents 20 times the annual operational energy of current Australian buildings. Studies have suggested that the water embodied in buildings may be just as significant as that of energy. As for embodied energy, these studies have been based on traditional analysis methods, such as process and input-output analysis. These methods have been shown to suffer from errors relating to the availability of data and its reliability. Hybrid methods have been developed in an attempt to provide a more reliable assessment of the embodied energy and water associated with the construction of buildings. This paper evaluates the energy and water resources embodied in a commercial office building using a hybrid analysis method based on input-output data. It was found that the use of this hybrid analysis method increases the reliability and completeness of an embodied energy and water analysis of a typical commercial building by 45% and 64% respectively, over traditional analysis methods. The embodied energy and water associated with building construction is significant and thus represents an area where considerable energy and water savings are possible over the building life-cycle. These findings suggest that current best-practice methods of embodied energy and water analysis are sufficiently accurate for most typical applications, but this is heavily dependent upon data quality and availability.

Energy analysis of the construction of office buildings /by Graham J. Treloar

Buildings have a significant impact on the environment due to the energy required for the manufacture of construction materials. The method of assessing the energy embodied in a product is known as energy analysis. Detailed office building embodied energy case studies are very rare. However, there is evidence to suggest that the energy requirements for the construction phase of commercial buildings, including the energy embodied in materials, is a significant component of the life cycle energy requirements. This thesis sets out to examine the current state of energy analysis, determine the national average energy intensities < i.e. embodied energy rates < for building materials and assess the significance of using national average energy intensities for the energy analysis of a case study office building. Likely ranges of variation in the building material embodied energy rates from the national averages are estimated and the resulting distribution for total embodied energy in the case study building simulated. Strategies for improving the energy analysis methods and data are suggested. Detailed energy analysis is shown to be a useful indicative method of quantifying the energy required for the construction of buildings.

Evaluation of an environmental rating tool for commercial building design

This research examined the inclusion of environmental rating tools in the design of commercial buildings. Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important for designers and the results of the study suggest that rating tools can be an asset to design teams, provided they are integrated and reinforced throughout the design process.

The business case for sustainable office buildings

The market for sustainable buildings has rapidly gained momentum in the design and construction phases, however it appears that development and investment in these buildings by the private sector is limited. This is further complicated by the limited information available confirming the financial viability of sustainable buildings, with relatively little research conducted into the relationship between sustainability and the market value of commercial buildings. Currently the demand for sustainable buildings in Australia and New Zealand is being encouraged through government legislation and policy, where investment by the private sector has been relatively slow to develop due to the lack of evidential proof of the economic viability of sustainable buildings. Clearly if the progress and uptake of sustainable buildings is to develop within the property market, it is essential that the relationship between market value and sustainability should be understood in order to fully inform the investment industry.

User satisfaction in sustainable office buildings : a preliminary study

Energy efficiency was first mandated for commercial buildings in 2006 in Part J of The Building Code of Australia (BCA) and regulators are already implementing increased measures in 2010 (ABCB 2010). Further increases will follow as part of the co-ordinated effort to reduce building related greenhouse gas emissions. The introduction of the Energy Efficiency Disclosure Bill 2010 will establish a national scheme to promote the disclosure of information about the energy efficiency of office buildings as well as further highlighting the need for efficiency. Increased energy efficiency in the form of insulation, energy efficient light fittings, sophisticated Building Management Systems (BMS), micro-generation such as solar and wind turbines all result in measurable quantifiable reductions in operating costs for owners and tenants. However convincing all building owners about the sound business case for adopting sustainability measures has not been fully realised. To-date the adoption of cutting edge sustainable buildings in Australia is restricted to a few industry leaders, such as Investa and ISPT in Victoria for example. Sustainable building owners and tenants often benefit from reduced operating costs during the building lifecycle although the ‘intangible’ effect on businesses (e.g. employee productivity) is uncertain. This aspect has not been accurately quantified and has not been included as part of the measurement of sustainability in buildings.

This study will allow property stakeholders, including government policy-makers and investors/developers, to better understand the optimal type and level of sustainability to be incorporated into the built environment. In addition this knowledge will enable policymakers to make more informed decisions with regards to the likely impact of the legislative measures they propose in respect of sustainability and buildings in The Building Code of Australia (BCA) and other relevant legislation.

On the acoustic performance of a precast panel system made from environmentally sustainable concrete : application in sports hall buildings

The use of green building materials and products promotes conservation of non-renewable resources and help reduce associated environmental impacts. This article reports the acoustical performance of a precast panel system made largely from concrete waste material. Two major applications for such panels that are being investigated currently include walls and claddings to industrial and commercial buildings and sound barriers for urban freeways. In this study, the application of the concrete panels for optimizing reverberation time (RT) in sports halls is tested using numerical simulations. As an innovative approach, additional layers are added to the precast panels to improve their appearance. The absorption coefficients of the concrete panel improved significantly with the architectural finish. The material can be tuned according to the required peak frequency. The architectural finish helped reduce the RT for frequencies above 500 Hz. Its application to different types of ceilings revealed that the RT of curved ceiling reduced up to 40% compared to flat and hybrid ceiling. A comparison of wall and ceiling modifications in small, medium and large sports halls showed that medium-sized halls have better acoustical performance compared with small and large halls with ceiling as well as wall treatment.

Performance assessment of earth pipe cooling system for low energy buildings in a subtropical climate

Energy consumption in heating and cooling around the world has been a major contributor to global warming. Hence, many studies have been aimed at finding new techniques to save and control energy through energy efficient measures. Most of this energy is used in residential, agricultural and commercial buildings. It is therefore important to adopt energy efficiency measures in these buildings through new technologies and novel building designs. These new building designs can be developed by employing various passive cooling systems. Earth pipe cooling is one of these which can assist to save energy without using any customary mechanical units. This paper investigates the earth pipe cooling performance in a hot humid subtropical climate of Rockhampton, Australia. A thermal model is developed using ANSYS Fluent for measuring its performance. Impacts of air velocity, air temperature, relative humidity and soil temperature on room cooling performance are also assessed. A temperature reduction of around 2 °C was found for the system. This temperature reduction contributed to an energy saving of a maximum of 866.54 kW (8.82%) per year for a 27.23 m3 room.