Low energy building

National Standars

• Design guidelines

Design

• Climate challenge
• Construction, technology
• Renewable energy
• Sustainable design
• Energy efficiency

Integrated design process of low-energy building

In order to build a low-energy building an integrated design process should begin and be implemented in early stage of building even before the first drawing sketch from an architect is produced. The integrated design process enables all the team members to work together and look upon the main requirements, possible ways and solutions that will lead to design of best possible building regarding energy and needs.[1]

Early in building process the design team will meet to ensure the cooperation and understanding of commitments between members. In the project a “key person” can be named to connect the members of team together and ensure that the integrated process will be continue. In Europe this person is usually called the business process manager. The owner will play the main and critical role and will be often join by a financial manager. The perfect strategy would be for the members of designer team (or head) to stay on the project to the very end of building process. The members of team must meet throughout the various design stages and periodically, during construction. Also the integrated design reguires many simulations and software to use in order to achieve the best possible solutions.

The integrated design process team:

1. Owner (or representative)
2. Architect and
3. Designer (facilitator, business process manager)
4. Civil Engineer
5. Construction manager (contractor)
6. Structural, Mechanical and Electrical consulting Engineers
7. Specialized consultants (energy, finance)

The first step of the process preparation is for a developer (owner, or his representative) to identify the needs, criteria and commitments for high performance and energy efficiency of building. In this stage the main information should be also collected (space, number of people, budget, information about building site, type of soil, orientation, height of surrounding buildings, etc).

Second stage could be called a pre-design where the architect and teams of specialist will produce, based on information from stage one, the early graphic suggestions for the building. There should be more solutions available for the Engineers and specialists to analyze. The systems should be analyzed together such as: lightning (daylight and natural) with mechanical systems, daylight with envelope system, water and heating and cooling, ventilation and lightning. The team undertakes the whole building system analysis and must consider the interaction between systems.

The design development allows the number of solutions to be narrowed to few possible solutions with the best possible energy and indoor performance with respect to financial and architect value of the object. Greater details and plans should be considered for all aspects of the building. This phase should end with detailed design which will be agreed on by all members of team and owner. After detailed project documentation will be done, the contract stage can begin which are needed for proper pricing, permitting and construction.

The contractor and construction part of team should be at very large projects from early beginning but in small projects he can join the process in construction stage and together with the team should be fully involved in the process. The design team is fully responsible for assuring that the building and energy requirements will be met together with design and contract.

How the building meets the criteria is set in stage commissioning where all function and systems of building are assessed and evaluated by the design and construction team, and can be still changed before the final and closing stage of building. After the building has been fully built and open sometimes post-occupancy evaluation is done to assess how the building works and meets the criteria, energy and indoor performance set at the beginning by owner and team.

Key actions recommended ensuring successful integrated design process:

• Integrated process begins at earliest stage
• Name “key person” of integrated design process
• Simulation and interaction among building systems
• Analyzing costs (building cost, life-cycle, maintenance)
• Energy and indoor performance at the best level
• Evaluation of criteria
• Rewards for extra work

Results shows that the integrated design process benefits from cooperation of all team members and the process provides the necessary information and strategies to plan, design and build the high low-energy performance buildings. The building will have reasonable initial and life-cycle costs over entire existence cycle. The design objectives which will be achieved are: safe, secure, flexible, aesthetic, functional/operational and sustainable. A succesfull integrated design leads to the perfect whole building design.

External links

Examples

Low-Energy House in Sisimiut, Greenland

Resources

WBDG The whole building design [greenbuilding.ca/down/gbc2005/Other_presentations/IDP_overview.pdf Overview of IDP] The integrated design process