Future-proofing facilities management (Future FM )

Non-domestic buildings account for approximately 18% of UK carbon emissions and 13% of final energy consumption. In contrast to domestic buildings, which can be well characterised by a few representative archetypes, the non-domestic sector is highly diverse incorporating a range of built forms to satisfy the needs of commercial, retail, public service, and other end-use sectors. These assets are also very long-lasting and it is estimated that 70% of the UK's current non-domestic buildings will still be in service in 2050. Consequently a major challenge is to design technologies and operating strategies that support a transformation of existing non-domestic buildings into efficient buildings compatible with the UK's energy and climate policy goals.

Facilities managers must balance people (the occupants), place (the building's context), and processes (the installed equipment) in order to deliver agreed levels of building services to occupants, of which energy services are particularly important. However, experience has shown that the variability of occupant behaviour and long-term changes in the demand for energy services creates significant challenges for maintaining highly efficient building energy systems. Furthermore it cannot be taken for granted that future innovations will overcome these barriers. New technologies and business models - such as smart meters, heat pumps, phase change materials, real-time pricing, pervasive sensing, and more - will bring with them implicit assumptions about buildings and their occupants and facilities managers will again need to determine how they can be installed and operated effectively, in an integrated fashion. Therefore, although the future holds significant technical potential for improving the energy efficiency of non-domestic buildings, experience suggests that none of these innovations will remove the need for fundamental improvements in the energy management of non-domestic buildings, and indeed provide more opportunities for optimisation.

The proposed three-year research project will therefore develop and demonstrate novel adaptive methods both to improve the energy performance of existing buildings and to ensure that these gains are preserved in the face of technological and societal change. This will be achieved by working with partners representing the education, commercial, and retail sectors, thus delivering immediate impact to the energy management of their buildings and also enabling the developed techniques to be sufficiently flexible for widespread use in other non-domestic buildings. The research will therefore help the UK transform its building stock to meet a range of energy and climate policy goals, while enabling the facilities management industry to demonstrate new products and services for domestic and international markets.

The proposed research will develop and apply novel facilities management strategies that deliver continuous energy efficiencyt improvements and are robust under changing technologies and policy environments. The work packages develop these outcomes in three distinct non-domestic building sectors with a view to ensuring that the results are as widely applicable as possible. Consequently the research is anticipated to provide both immediate and long-term sustained impacts for the following beneficiaries:

1. Construction sector: The construction sector is coming under increasing pressure to improve the energy efficiency of its products. This is giving rise to increasing pressure for vertical integration between the construction and the management/operation phases of the building lifecycle (with a critical focus on commissioning). The research will provide improved understanding of the relationship between design and in-situ performance and will produce underpinning knowledge to support successful vertical integration.

2. Building owners: The project will work closely with building owners in three key sectors: educational (Imperial), retail (Sainsbury's), and commercial (Laing O'Rourke). With experimental tests on specific buildings within each of their estates, the project will have an immediate impact by improving knowledge about these assets and highlighting the potential benefits of more efficient management. Furthermore the methods will lead to energy savings that in turn will deliver financial savings and reputational benefits. This knowledge will also enable these firms to be more demanding clients and thus to work with facilities managers and control providers to deliver the highest quality service. Long-term impact will be achieved as the lessons from these early pilot sites are rolled out across their wider estates.

3. Facilities managers: The research will demonstrate to firms how a close integration between sensed and opportunistic data can deliver additional energy savings and thus stimulate ideas for new business and service opportunities.

4. Technology providers: The research benefits from partnering with a BMS control specialist and this allows us to push the boundaries on designing advanced control strategies that maximise the use of new data streams for an improved building performance.

5. End users: One of the major beneficiaries of the research will be the end users of non-domestic buildings (both tenants and visitors/clients), who will gain a more comfortable environment, lower energy bills and a consequence have a lower carbon footprint. This is important for commercial office space, student residences, but also for food retail which are one of the highest energy intensive building types.

6. UK business: The facilities management industry is worth between £40-95 billion annually and continuous innovation is vital to ensure that this success continues both in the UK and export markets. As the techniques we develop will be generic and widely applicable, the stakeholders mentioned above will thus have a suite of new tools available to them for sale in overseas markets.

7. Academia: For academic audiences, we plan five journal publications one for each of the technical work packages and published as open-access. We intend to complement these with social media engagement and in particular YouTube videos to demonstrate the application of the methods to real buildings. This will also encourage engagement with a wider non-expert audience. Student projects related to the project, at both undergraduate and graduate level, will provide valuable leverage to the project funding and are anticipated to be particularly appealing to students as they will be embedded within the Imperial student residences. We plan publications in key trade journals such as Energy & Buildings, Applied Energy, and Energy Policy.