The case for Centres of Excellence in sustainable building design

Students
A Centre of Excellence cannot function without a good supply of raw material –
high-quality undergraduate students.
At the heart of a Centre of Excellence are the courses which will attract the best
undergraduates, as these are the people who have the ability and motivation to
lead industry. The development of programmes for a Centre of Excellence will
require not only traditional lectures and laboratory work, but also interdisciplinary
design projects to encourage experimentation and the application of knowledge.
A typical undergraduate student should have obtained close to three or four
grade ‘A’s at A-level, including Maths and Physics for the majority. The annual
intake of students in subjects related to building design should be well in excess
of 100. These numbers are necessary to maintain a critical mass of academic
staff to be properly engaged in research as well as teaching, and to warrant the
investment in building physics specialists and facilities necessary to form a fully
active Centre of Excellence. The great importance of Building Engineering Physics
to society makes the discipline an attractive one for students, and hosting a
Centre of Excellence should lead to an increase in student numbers, which will
help to ensure the long-term viability of the Centres. A Centre should aim to
deliver into the building professions 60 carbon-literate engineering graduates
per year, who will have been drawn from building services or civil/structural
engineering cohorts. As an incidental consequence of the methods of teaching
it is expected that Centres will also deliver of the order of 70 carbon-aware
graduates in architecture and other closely related disciplines.
It is necessary to consider whether the resulting numbers of graduates from the
Centres of Excellence would be sufficient to make a difference to the overall cohort
of graduates entering industry. The total numbers of students in different fields are
published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Table 1 indicates that
the Centres of Excellence could deliver approximately 25% of graduate engineers
entering the building design field and about 10% of other professionals.
Table 1: Graduate numbers from all UK universities in 2010 [HESA, 2011] and
projected graduate numbers from Centres of Excellence.
Graduate Estimated Final
numbers proportion number
engaged in
building
design
All UK universities (HESA Figures):
Civil engineering 3,715 0.25* 929
Architecture, planning and others 3,420 0.7 2,394
Total 7,135 3,323
From one Centre of Excellence (Prediction):
Carbon-literate engineers 100 0.6# 60
Carbon-aware architects, planners and others 100 0.7 70
From four Centres of Excellence:
Carbon-literate engineers 400 0.6 240
Carbon-aware architects, planners and others 400 0.7 280
* It is estimated that the majority of civil engineering graduates in the UK will enter the industry either
in contracting organisations, where it is difficult to identify design as a separate process, or will enter
the infrastructure sector, rather than the building sector.
# The Centres of Excellence will focus on design education relating to buildings and therefore it
is estimated that graduates from the Centres will enter the building construction sector in higher
proportions than the industry average.
44 The Royal Academy of Engineering