The case for Centres of Excellence in sustainable building design

Therefore, a Centre of Excellence should build upon established research and
teaching in the fields of building science and low carbon design, but will need
sufficient appropriately experienced and qualified academic staff and industrial
practitioners to deliver new research and teaching in the field.
In Appendix 1 we have evaluated a potential structure for a Centre of Excellence.
This structure is designed to provide sufficient breadth and depth to deliver both
the teaching, professional education and research goals set out above. Applying
full economic costing to the staffing for such a centre indicates that seed funding
of £7.5 million would be required to operate a single centre for five years. After
the initial period it is expected that the centre will become self-financing from
income derived from research grants, both from industry and the research
councils; from the delivery of training; and continuing professional development
to the industry and from the sales of publications where appropriate. For the
purposes of the evaluation, it is assumed that four Centres of Excellence are
pump-prime funded at a total cost of £30 million over five years.
Establishing a number of Centres of Excellence, geographically distinct from each
other, strengthens the ability to support the entire UK construction industry and,
through developing collaboration between centres with different local pressures
and methods of working, creates the opportunity for more varied research.
The impact of Centres of Excellence
Centres of Excellence at some of the UK’s top university departments in
construction and the built environment have the potential to deliver several
hundred new carbon literate and expert graduates every year, driving a sea
change in the construction industry. By establishing the Centres at universities
that already have active research in the field and healthy recruitment of students,
the required growth in carbon literate graduates can be met by conversion of
existing recruits rather than exclusively from recruiting new students.
Because of the current demand for such training these early career engineers and
architects will quickly gain positions of influence. These people will then drive a
demand for low carbon skills through the industry to the technical and craft levels
and to clients and other professionals. These graduates will also create a demand
for fundamental research back up to the universities. In this way targeting a
small section of the industry could bring about dramatic change throughout the
industry.
In Appendix 2, we present an economic analysis of the net present value to
society of the Centres of Excellence evaluated over a 15-year period to 2030. This
analysis shows a very significant return on the initial investment of well over £1
billion, with potential carbon abatement of 3.5 million tonnes per annum at the
end of the period.
If we project forwards to 2050 then the abatement potential would rise to nearly
11 million tonnes per annum with a net present value of over £6 billion compared
to abatement through the present mix of insulation, energy-saving technologies
and micro-generation.
Unquantifiable benefits from Centres of Excellence
The Centres of Excellence are likely to have a number of beneficial impacts for
UK manufacturers of technologies for the construction industry. For example, the
UK has a low standard of façade manufacturing in comparison to many other
European countries, particularly Germany.
34 The Royal Academy of Engineering