Resilience starts with asking new questions

There’s no doubt the Covid-19 pandemic has challenged so many assumptions we had about our society, our lives and our built environment. As a mechanical engineer, I always strive to ensure the building systems I design are efficient and effective. However, the unexpected challenges the pandemic has presented in building operations and building occupancy has transformed how I look at our industry moving forward and the solutions to the challenges we face.

The consequences of lockdowns and the shift to working from home as a public health measure caused enormous change – and difficulty – for the property sector. Many retail, commercial and hospitality buildings lost tenants which was a major blow for owners who lost rental income. This vacating and scaling back of occupants also made it difficult for many building operators and facilities managers to run buildings efficiently.

In many cases, building systems including lighting, and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) are pre-programmed for certain days and hours of operation and for an expected level of occupant activity. It is not easy in many buildings to change these set points and parameters, particularly if the operations team is unsure of what needs to stay on for reasons of safety and indoor environment quality, and what can be scaled back or switched off until occupants return.

The ability of a building to respond quickly to change comes back to the design. All buildings are designed for specific purposes and to operate under specific criteria to ensure they can fulfil the purpose. The expected people load of the building – when, where and how many people – is one of the parameters we use to inform design. We ask questions including how much heating and cooling will be required? How much electricity is likely to be used when the asset is operating? The answers to these questions drive the final configuration of the building services.

Looking retrospectively, we’ve learnt valuable lessons in flexible and adaptable building operations during the last two years.

The most common issue was reduced occupancy in buildings. Building owners needed to shut down entire floors to reduce costs. Most buildings were not designed to operate with such low levels of occupancy in an efficient way. Examples of this include chiller and cooling tower configurations that do not work well under low load conditions, and air handling systems that serve multiple floors and can’t be individually isolated. These are scenarios that can all be addressed at the design stage.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but the onus is on us now to ask the right questions and help our clients create resilient, high-performance buildings. In addition, we also need to ask ourselves some other questions: What is the new normal post-pandemic? Will we ever go back to offices full time? Or will buildings need to be constantly repurposed to keep them occupied and generating income for the owners?

We need to start designing flexible spaces that can be easily transformed to fit different roles, where the mechanical system does not need to be completely dismantled when the space changes from an office to a restaurant or vice versa. Conversations early in the design process need to address this dimension of adaptability as a form of risk assessment.

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about building operations and building design without addressing the big performance gap between them. The way a building is designed to operate often does not translate across to its actual operation. Typically, there are different stakeholders involved in each phase and the information chain easily breaks.

To resolve this, we need to close the loop. Information needs to flow better; asset managers need to involve building design engineers in the operations phase, and feed operational data back to the designers. This flow of information allows for the optimisation of both the operation and design processes.

To do this, I am increasingly looking to integrate data and proptech in my design thinking. Proptech – property sector technology – incorporates multiple types of digital platforms, apps and digitally-enabled systems. It is a very broad term and comprises many different things. Examples of proptech include: a hot-desking booking app, a digital platform for managing rent and a cloud-hosted building management system. In this case I am referring to building analytics platforms that enable us to look into the operational data of the assets within the building and make data-driven decisions.

By asking the right questions, closing the loop of design and operation, and making use of the new technologies and all the data collected, we can ensure buildings are always operating at their peak efficiency under any scenario.