Two of the UK’s major building services engineering organisations have agreed to work more closely ‘to ensure progress on several key initiatives’, including the push for Net Zero in the built environment, and the delivery of the Building Safety Act.
Contractors’ trade body the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) and professional institution CIBSE (the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers) have drawn up a series of joint projects to help achieve their common aim of ‘advancing and promoting the art, science, and practice of building services engineering for the benefit of society’. The two organisations have a long history of collaboration, but say they feel ‘the growing urgency to transform the built environment in line with the country’s decarbonisation and healthcare aims calls for a more integrated approach’.
“Talking about collaboration is one thing – doing it quite another,” said CIBSE CEO, Ruth Carter. “The building services industry is in greater demand than ever, increasingly accounting for a much larger proportion of the value of construction FM projects. Our supply chains must thus be more closely aligned, and the different professions more joined up, to deliver the higher levels of digital sophistication and integrated design necessary to meet growing client demand and legislative scrutiny.”
The two organisations have agreed to provide ‘deeper support’ for each other’s key events, while continuing their already successful collaboration on technical guidance. They will focus particularly on the Building Safety Act, developments linked to indoor air quality (IAQ), retrofitting and refurbishment of existing buildings to advance decarbonisation, and the growth in heat networks. They will also work together to understand the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for the industry, and its potential to improve productivity.
“There is now far greater awareness of the role the building services profession plays in addressing some of society’s most pressing challenges, so this is the right time to deliver a programme of joint initiatives” said BESA CEO, David Frise. “The sheer scale of the technical, legislative, and recruitment challenges now facing the industry calls for a properly concerted and joined-up approach on behalf of the whole sector.”
David Frise also congratulated new CIBSE President, Fiona Cousins, on her election, and welcomed her focus on ‘reimagining building performance’.
The two organisations will deliver joint sessions on the Building Safety Act to explain the operational detail of the legislation to members at both the BESA National Conference on October 17, and at CIBSE’s Build2Perform Live event on November 13-14.
Pictured are Ruth Carter and David Frise.