Memorandum submitted by School Works on
behalf of the British Council for School Environments (BCSE)
I am writing in response to the call for submissions
for the Select Committee on sustainable schools. I would like
to take this opportunity to draw your attention to a new organisation—The
British Council for School Environments (BCSE).
The BCSE arises out of discussion between a
number of thought leaders in the school buildings sector including;
School Works, RIBA, The Rayne Foundation and BRE.
From our extensive experience in the field of
school design, construction and procurement we believe that Building
Schools for the Future and the other capital school projects,
such as the Academies and primary capital programme, present a
momentous opportunity for everyone involved in both education
and the construction and design of schools. However, there is
a real chance that some of this investment will not be maximised
and, worse, that significant opportunities will be lost.
For this vision to be realised in an effective
and sustainable way there is a great need for genuine co-operation
within industry, local authorities and schools on an unprecedented
scale. Experience and best practice is not currently shared. This
raises the issue of best value for the consumer and for the tax
payer. Innovation cannot be imposed but must be owned and shared.
Following a period of extensive research and
consultation with leading organisations, School Works and an interim
board[3]
have developed the British Council for School Environments to
support and act as an advocate for this essential co-operation.
BCSE is an umbrella body monitoring and promoting good practice
in the design of learning environments, and feeding back to Government
on behalf of those stakeholders involved in the design, construction
and use of school buildings.
The BCSE will be a membership charity and already
has 36 Founding Members who are committed to supporting the development
of the organisation. These include:
Aedas Architects Ltd
Amec Investments
Association of Teachers and Lecturers
Bovis Lend Lease
Buro Four
Buschow Henley Architects
Capita Symonds
Carillion
CM Parker Browne
Davis Langdon
Devon County Council
Dorset County Council
Ecophon
Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects
Galliford Try Investments
Hampshire County Council
Hawksmoor Engineering
Hertfordshire County Council
HOK Architects
| Jo Richardson Community School
Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council
London Academy
Milton Keynes Council
Mouchel Parkman Babcock
NPS Property Consultants
Ryder HKS
Stoke City Council
Waring & Netts Architects
Wates
Fenstanton Primary School
Carlton Hill Primary School
CITB Construction Skills
Skanska
BDP Architects
Nightingale Associates
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The main aims of the British Council for School Environments
are to:
— Support its members in developing quality learning
environments.
— Bridge gaps between the world of design and construction
and that of education and other providers.
— Provide the mechanisms for the sharing of experience
so that good practice and innovation can be shared and so that
mistakes are not repeated.
— Stimulate creativity and support best practice.
The British Council for School Environments feels that the
issue of sustainable schools is extremely important and would
be pleased to contribute to the inquiry. Following the Select
Committee's call for submissions for the inquiry into sustainable
schools we invited a number of our partners to participate in
a discussion on the subject with a view to sharing the views of
a slice of those involved in school design and build with you.
The BCSE will be launched on the 19 June at the joint School
Works/BCSE Global Learning Environments summit to be held at the
recently opened Jo Richardson Community School.
BRITISH COUNCIL
FOR SCHOOL
ENVIRONMENTS
The British Council for School Environments is a new umbrella
body monitoring and promoting good practice in the design of learning
environments, and feeding back to Government on behalf of those
stakeholders involved in the design, construction and use of school
buildings.
BACKGROUND
On the 16 May 2006 the British Council for School Environments
gathered together a number of key partners all of whom are experts
working within the field of school buildings to discuss issues
around sustainable schools with a view to submitting our thoughts
to the Education and Skills Select Committee on sustainable schools.
Representatives included:
| Chair— | Ty Goddard—School Works/BCSE
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| Roderic Bunn—BSRIA
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| Ben Harrop—Carrillion
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| James Roden—Catalyst Lend Lease
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| Steven Jenkins—Buro 4
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| Martin Mayfield—Arup
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| Peter Smith—Education Advisor, Waring and Netts
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| Brian Johnson—Aedas Architects
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| Simon Henley—Bushow Henley Architects
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| Paul Hyett—Ryder HKS Architects
|
| Kate Reynolds—Mouchel Parkman
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| Mike Peters—Education Adviser
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| Stefan Jakobek—HOK Architects
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The BCSE seminar on Sustainable schools was intended to provide
a forum for the sharing of experience and good practice between
BCSE Members. It is not intended to reflect the official policy
of the BCSE or the individual organisations involved but does
raise some interesting points.
ISSUES
Roderic Bunn from BSRIA (a consultancy, test and research
organisation working with construction and building services companies)
was editor of the CIBSE (Chartered Institute of Building Service
Engineers) Journal during the 1990's and has since been researching
a number of case studies of sustainable schools for the DfES.
The findings that follow derive from analysis of those case studies,
matched with guidance developed and issued by the Usable Buildings
Trust (UBT), of which Roderic Bunn is a trustee.
Discussion was based around findings from these schools,
the work that participants had themselves been involved in and
the key points on sustainability:
Local regeneration and Wellbeing.
Environmental and ecological.
1. BRIEFING AND
PROCESS
The best sustainable schools design comes when the schools
and LAs engage fully in the briefing process and are supported
throughout by experts. The best schools spent a lot of time refining
the brief and involving all designers in the developing the design
concept.
Those schools that had dedicated involvement from the governing
board, such as Riverhead Infants School in Sevenoaks which had
construction experts on hand to help with the briefing process,
tended to produce the best sustainable designs. This happened
when there was clarity within the design process as to who the
client was (ie the school rather than the LA).
There is currently no specific advice to schools or local
authorities on the best way to procure a sustainable school. In
addition there is no standard way to develop a brief for a school
design and this leads to varied quality. The process of procuring
a school differs however among local authorities and this can
have an impact on the extent to which school communities are involved
in briefing and design. In some authorities there are issues around
a lack of capacity within the local authority in terms of sustainable
expertise.
The level of sustainable expertise varies greatly from local
authority to local authority.
One architect who worked at a sustainable school said:
"There is some basic stuff that is still being done wrong.
For example, architects being asked to design a building three
months before they ask any other profession to look at it. That
should be a no-fundable process. I think the DfES should not fund
unless you have a fully-appointed team. You can still find local
authorities where the architects are on the top floor and the
engineers (if they've got any) are on different floors. And when
I ask for the m&e guys to join the architects and structural
engineers in discussion, the m&e guys say `what do you want
us for—the architects haven't designed it yet'. They don't
realise they are just as much a part of the design team as the
architect".
Local authorities do things very differently from each other.
In terms of good ones, we are working with Monmouth County Council
on a primary school and they are a client like Cheshire County
Council who understand partnering. With Cheshire we had four client
liaison people covering education, property and building management,
and those people did not change all the way through the project.
On another local authority, we just saw one person and have never
met anyone else, and she was new. But at Monmouth, we have four
people again. And in Manchester, we are working with a local authority
which has huge aspirations to get the framework in place [...]
"
There was also concern amongst participants that the current
competitive tendering process for work under Building School for
the Future leaves little room for rigorous briefing in the early
stages of contract. In addition there were issues around the high
cost of bidding for consortia. It was felt that this process prices
out smaller local architects firms and contractors who could contribute
to the sustainability of the building in terms of local job creation
and local sourcing of materials.
2. TECHNOLOGY
Technology is often baffling to the users of school buildings.
It is also often difficult to manage. In some of the case studies,
efforts had been made to include technologies in the design mix
that are thought to automatically endow the school with sustainability
credentials. This includes PVs, wind turbines, wood chip boilers,
and rainwater and grey water recovery.
Some of these systems present a greater technical challenge
and management burden than others. Rainwater recovery for example,
has largely proved to be a "fit and forget" technology,
which requires modest facilities management. It is largely successful
in most of the schools studied. It also has an educational value.
By contrast, some schools have been given highly demanding
"icons" of renewable technology. In some cases, the
PVs and turbines are not working properly, owing to technical
glitches or a lack of understanding by the school caretaker or
local authority. In most cases the energy budget for the school
has not been managed effectively, so even if the technology was
contributing to reducing the school's fossil fuel demands, there
was no evidence to support it.
There are cases where schools have been equipped with this
type of feature and where staff were collating a lot of energy
data. However, no energy targets for the school have been set,
and no real assessment of energy use was being carried out. In
the absence of proper energy monitoring and targeting, it has
not been possible to understand the true energy performance of
the so-called sustainable school and the data becomes irrelevant.
3. BUILDING OWNERSHIP
Sustainable school buildings appear to be more effective
when the users have control and ownership of their own building.
This is particularly notable in schools which have "Icons
of Sustainability" such as wind turbines and solar panels
which were added to a building or built into a design without
thinking about whether the users of the building know how to use,
maintain and make full use of them. When they work these Icons
can be used as a curriculum tool and can inspire local communities,
however if the school community don't know how to maintain it
they will fall into disrepair. A number of the case study schools
had these "icons of sustainability" that did not necessarily
work and were not the best way to create a sustainable building.
Occupants like buildings that can respond to them, usable
controls and interfaces, buildings designed to be largely simply
self-managing and discomfort alleviation systems: openable windows
and vents for example. In some schools, control is done off-site
by the local authority, and the school staff are unable to switch
off heating systems when they need to. This policy tends to lead
to a "default to on" mentality, which is not energy-efficient,
but is easy to manage.
A particular concern for experts is that some school buildings
have sustainable elements that were implemented by the local authority.
If those schools were to become Trust Schools for educational
reasons, ownership and management of the school and its assets
will transfer to the school governing board. There is a risk that
complex energy saving technology, procured and managed by the
local authority (possibly remotely using electronic systems) will
be inherited by the schools. Most schools lack the resources,
willingness and time to manage non-educational equipment like
wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, leading to the problems
described above.
4. ENERGY
In most of the schools studied gas and electricity consumption
is both higher than the designers expected, and higher than DfES
benchmarks.
In general, gas consumption is higher because heating systems
seem to run for longer. This is particularly true of extended
schools where schools are used by the community during evenings
and weekends.
Electricity consumption is often greater than the best practice
target, and often higher. Again, without proper energy monitoring
and targeting, it is difficult to identify where the power is
going. Partly it is systems defaulting to on, such as lighting
(particularly of out-of-hours use), but the profusion of ICT also
contributes, with a lack of control over electronic whiteboards,
projectors, computers, and catering equipment like fridge freezers
which are left on during holiday times.
With the development of the use of ICT in schools and other
electrical equipment it is not unusual for new schools to use
much more electricity than historic good practice benchmarks—a
problem that needs to be tackled vigorously in the next generation
of school buildings if they are to be energy-efficient.
At present, high electricity consumption (which has a large
impact on greenhouse gas emissions) and the use of gas for heating
mean that one particular case study school comes out above the
combined benchmark for CO2. However, once electricity savings
have been implemented and the biomass boiler is working reliably,
emissions should fall below the good practice benchmark. This
case study demonstrates the importance routine monitoring and
fine-tuning in the year after occupancy of new buildings—even
the very best ones—are to achieve their design potential.
In many cases, designers of sustainable schools have not
set meaningful energy targets for the school, and even if they
did, they did not take account of likely hours of occupation.
Without that discipline in place from the outset, it's not surprising
that the energy use is not being monitored correctly.
Where energy targets have been set, designers have been forced
to use old or onerous energy targets, in the form of Energy
Consumption Guide 73 (last revised in 1998, using even older
data) or Building Bulletin 87, which seems to demand an
energy performance that is far too difficult to attain.
In addition to this many of the Building Bulletins create
conflicts between sustainability benchmarks and regulations. For
example there is a particular conflict between aims for—sustainable
buildings and passive ventilation solutions and new acoustics
regulations.
5. INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
(ICT)
There are issues around the inherent conflict which sometimes
arises with policies from different areas of government. For example,
the DfES's drive for electronic whiteboards and the rise in the
use of ICT may be at odds with the drive for energy sustainability.
6. CURRICULUM
Sustainable buildings can be very useful teaching tools for
young people. Rainwater recovery systems for example are proving
very useful for teaching children about climate change issues.
Architect-sustainable school:
"We don't say that sustainability is good because it
is green, we say that in schools, sustainability is the means
by which the school will get better results. So the rainwater
harvesting should not be regarded as a piece of m&e kit. To
value engineer out the rainwater harvesting system should be similar
to value engineering out the textbooks."
"What we say is that it should be linked into the curriculum
cycle on water use: where does the water go, and how does it get
back to rainwater that falls on our roofs? If I could get 11-year-olds
coming out of primary school understanding kWh and kilograms of
carbon dioxide, and energy impact through cause and effect—switch
the light off and save carbon—we would do more by that than
by employing the best environmental consultants."
7. LIFE CYCLE
COSTINGS
It was felt that DfES view schools in terms of capital and
not in terms of life cycle costs. The area guidelines and building
costings are not based on longer term life cycle considerations.
The development of Local Education Partnerships as part of
Building Schools for the Future delivery strategies will mean
that relationships between LAs, contractors and schools could
last up to 25 years. This provides a great opportunity for thinking
about life-cycle costs.
If new schools will be expected to achieve a BREEAM excellent
rating The British Council for School Environments would be interested
to find out whether this has been costed by the DfES. One particular
concern of participants was that LAs, school and architects are
currently saying that they are finding a funding gap in BSF and
are often unable to fully deliver their sustainable vision. One
particular authority has done a lot of work during the brief development
phase in developing a sustainable vision with the school. However,
they are now unsure whether they can afford to deliver it.
8. FEEDBACK
We need to make post-occupancy feedback routine, and champion
the methodologies most appropriate to schools.
Teachers, parents and pupils expect designers of schools
to be experts on the performance of schools they create. This
is not normally the case, as people who produce buildings approach
it as a project. These people are composed of clients, designers
(architect, engineers of various specialisms), local authority
representatives/experts, project managers, contractors and subcontractors.
The people do not remain a team long enough after the project
has completed to understand much about how the buildings they
have produced actually work. There is a currently a lack of formal
feedback loops.
As a result, users rarely make the most of a school's design
potential, and there are large differences between expectations
and outcomes. Designers also can continue to repeat flawed prescriptions.
Conversely, they may not realise when they have a success on their
hands that they could replicate.
In short, in wanting to improve the design of schools so
that they are sustainable, we are largely expecting more from
an industry that does not always understand what constitutes energy
efficiency, and certainly does not take custody of building performance
beyond the defects liability period.
We need to develop a culture of feedback analysis, and use
the results of that analysis to improve subsequent designs.
Some form of relevant Post Occupancy Evaluation is essential
if we are not to continue the mistakes made in the past.
REFURBISHMENT
There needs to be more thought put into creating sustainable
schools where refurbishment is planned. How can staff, LAs, architects
and contractors create effective and value for money refurbished
environments.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The discussion highlighted a number of recommendations that
we would like to share with the Select Committee:
1. Governing bodies and schools need more expert assistance
and advice on developing briefs for "Sustainable schools".
2. DfES or PfS should develop a standard framework for
developing a brief. This should look to be flexible enough not
to stifle innovation but should provide a structure around which
discussion can happen.
3. There should be some scrutiny of the value for money
of the procurement and tendering process.
4. Change the procurement process to take a broader view
of design, involving all designers in partnering-type contracts
and taking into consideration the life of the building.
5. Don't procure what can't be managed. Sustainable schools
with icons of renewable energy (wind turbines, biomass boilers,
photovoltaics) can demand more than their occupants and management
are prepared—or able—to supply. If management is over-burdened,
the symptoms of under-performance are very likely to come to the
surface as occupant dissatisfaction and/or energy wastage.
6. Get the essentials right. In the urge to deliver a
school design that is defined as being sustainable by the amount
of visible renewable energy technology—wind turbines and
PVs—clients and designers alike are not getting the basics
right. As we've seen with IT, complex heating and lighting control
systems are often out of control due to inefficient design, overly
complex design or inadequate controls.
7. In moving to sustainability, school client and designers
should be looking for:
— Reductions in energy loads, through
more efficient and better-controlled fabric and equipment.
— Gentle engineering, with improvements
in controls.
— Closer matches between demand and supply,
seeking where possible to use information and feedback rather
than renewable energy technology to achieve the required conditions
with minimal waste.
8. The occupier should define the level of management
they regard as reasonable; and the designers should make clear
the level of support the building is likely to demand.
1. Users should be provided with a "How the building
works" handover document.
2. Clear guidelines and easily accessible guidelines on
the types of systems available.
3. Clear management and agreement of expectation with
regards to "Icons of sustainability".
4. Technology and systems should be kept simple and easy
to use.
5. There should be clear lines of responsibility in schools
and LAs for sustainable strategies. Leadership should start with
the client.
1. Encourage a study to check energy consumption across
a community to see whether there are savings in energy due to
the fact that people are using extended schools services. Is energy
used in school being balanced by savings in energy consumption
in the local community?
2. The next generation of sustainable schools must be
based on a set of energy performance benchmarks that are meaningful
and updated regularly. This should be a priority task for DfES
and local authorities and the design institutions.
3. Designers must be encouraged to set energy standards
for the building during the design process.
4. There should be encouragement for a voluntary code
for energy reporting and labelling of schools. (A voluntary energy
and CO2 declaration system is being set up with Carbon Trust money
by the Usable Buildings Trust (www.usablebuildings.co.uk) with
the British Property Federation for offices, based on actual energy
use. There was also a declaration system recently announced for
housing.)
— ICT and communications technology
1. There has to be more consistent approach within the
DfES for sustainable technologies.
2. There has to be better guidance from the DfES on what
constitutes acceptable energy consumption from electrical systems,
that takes into account the consequences of the Extended Schools
programme (out of hours occupation) and electronic technology
like interactive whiteboards that are a must-have for educational
reasons. That advice must follow-through to a new set of energy
target.
— Feedback and Post Occupancy Evaluation
1. There is a need for Independent Trusts, local authorities,
the DfES, school boards of governors and contractors to realise
that follow through-and feedback are not an option, but an essential
part of the process.
2. Ensure that there will be an expectation of feedback
and Post Occupancy Evaluation written into contracts at the beginning
of procurement processes.
3. Develop a sound platform of techniques and benchmarks.
4. Apportion money in the budget for a soft-landing after
initial occupancy, involving fine-tuning and optimisation for
a sustained low energy performance. The normal default of school
operation must meet the design expectation.
5. It is a challenge when technology outpaces capacity
and skills.
1. Revisiting Building bulletins, particularly BB 98 and
99 area guidelines.
2. There is a need for well researched exemplar case studies.
Overall: Keep it simple, do it well and only then get clever.
June 2006
3
Interim Board members currently include: Tim Joss, Rayne Foundation;
Peter Clegg, Feliden Clegg Bradley; Mike Inman, Stoke County Council;
Sally Hindle, Fenstanton Primary School; Andrew Buck, Jo Richardson
Community College; Keith Snook, RIBA and Terry Wyatt, Hoare Lea. Back
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