The case for Centres of Excellence in sustainable building design

Low carbon construction skills
Low carbon construction skills
Clearly the targets for carbon abatement cannot be met by the adoption of
technology alone. Present policy encourages investment in the manufacturing
technologies associated with the generation of renewable energy and with
energy-efficient equipment and system components. However, as demonstrated,
improving energy efficiency in energy consuming systems does not necessarily
achieve the desired results. In order to deliver carbon abatement at the lowest
possible cost to society, a step change is required in the level of available skills in
building science and integrated low carbon and sustainable design.
New skills are required in building engineering physics in order to deliver
buildings which are comfortable and high-performance through the use of
passive, rather than active, energy-consuming measures. New skills are required
in systems engineering to ensure that the many disparate parts of a building
function in harmony to achieve the desired objectives with the minimum energy
consumption. New skills in design synthesis are needed to bring together ideas
and expertise from many different disciplines. New skills and understanding
in human behaviour and building operation are necessary to ensure that
buildings designed for low carbon can be operated as such. Finally a new level
of understanding about the requirements for the low carbon paradise required
amongst those creating and enforcing regulations.
The demand for low carbon skills
A number of government announcements around The Green Deal indicate that
around 250,000 workers with specific low carbon skills will be required to deliver
the strategy by 2030. This is around 10% of the current workforce and requires
a growth rate in low carbon design and construction specialists of over 12,000
per year. In addition, this growth in construction and installation workforce
will demand an equivalent growth in management, design professionals and
specifiers.
A significant part of The Green Deal strategy is for financing the eco-retrofits from
a Green Lending Bank. As with other finance-led policies such as the feed-in
tariffs, it is almost certain that Green Deal finance will only be accessible for works
designed or undertaken by approved persons.
The previous job creation schemes for approved persons, domestic and
commercial energy assessors and air conditioning inspectors, had managed to
accredit a total of around 16,000 persons across the entire construction industry
by 2009 [Landmark 2010]. The accrediting bodies also reported that the majority
of these registrants were already employed elsewhere in the construction
industry and so this number does not represent entirely new jobs.
If allowance is made for potential new jobs in commercial low carbon retrofit pro
rata to those in the domestic sector and the projected rates of expenditure in the
two sectors, it can be seen that the total new job requirement could be double
that in the domestic sector alone. Thus the future training and accreditation
requirement annually could far exceed all the new energy assessor jobs delivered
across the whole construction industry to date.
This is not only a significant issue for recruitment and training, but with such
significant growth in the field it is essential that the training is appropriate so
that the new jobs will focus on carbon abatement at the lowest cost to society
rather than the lowest cost to the contractor. Thus the total number of new jobs
to be created in the low carbon construction industry must be increased by the
number of suitably qualified trainers also required.
The case for Centres of Excellence in sustainable building design 23