APPENDIX 6: VISIT TO THE BUILDING RESEARCH
ESTABLISHMENT, WATFORD
3 December 2004
Members visiting the Building Research Establishment
were: Lord Lewis of Newnham, Baroness Perry of Southwark (Chairman)
and Baroness Sharp of Guildford. In attendance: Dr Christopher
Johnson (Clerk).
Presentation by Martin Wyatt, CEO, Building Research
Establishment
Mr Wyatt summarised the history of the BRE, from
its establishment after the First World War, when it focused on
improved use of materials for housing, to its privatisation in
1997. At that time 95 percent of the BRE's work had been for Government,
a figure that had now dropped to around 40 percent. At the same
time the BRE's efficiency had significantly improved.
The BRE was a company, wholly owned by a Charitable
Trust, the BRE Trust. The BRE and a second wholly-owned company
(BRE Certification Ltd) gift-aided all their profits to the Trust,
which in turn returned them in order to fund research, contributing
to the public good.
The BRE was dedicated to providing sustainable building
solutions, covering such areas as risk management, fire and security,
environmental impacts, and so on. The company had a turnover of
around £40 million per annum, and funded 20 PhD students;
it was also, together with the Royal Academy of Engineering and
the EPSRC, setting up three to five Centres of Excellence associated
with universities.
BRE Certification was involved in EU "CE"
certification—although as the United Kingdom was the one
Member State not to sign up to the "CE" regime, it was
likely that large quantities of non-CE compliant goods would be
dumped here.
BRE was also closely involved with the labelling
and certification of buildings in respect of the Performance of
Buildings Directive, mainly through the Directive Implementation
Advisory Group (DIAG), which BRE chaired and provided the secretariat.
This required Member States to establish minimum performance standards
for new build and major refurbishment. It also required certification
of energy performance (though no obligation to make improvements)
whenever buildings changed hands, either through sale or renting.
By 2009 up to 20,000 people would be employed in certification.
The training for these people would not be very onerous for qualified
surveyors—it would be roughly equivalent to an NVQ. However,
no arrangements were yet in place for this training. The BRE had
also been in discussion with Government regarding the possibility
of tying energy efficiency incentives (such as stamp duty rebates)
to the certification process.
On the question of relations with the Government,
Mr Wyatt noted that the construction sector represented some ten
percent of GDP, and 20 percent of GDP growth. It employed some
three million people. However, there were no dominant players—no
one company controlled more than two percent of the market. Instead
there were many thousands of SMEs. This meant that the private
sector was not equipped to fund expensive research, and therefore
historically the Government had worked in partnership with the
BRE to conduct applied science research. A similar pattern could
be observed in other countries.
Arrangements for funding research had been reviewed
regularly, most recently by Sir John Fairclough in his 2002 report
Rethinking Construction Innovation and Research, who had
recommended increased funding for building research. However,
after the last election in 2001, responsibility for construction
had been moved to the DTI, which had little interest in construction.
The DTI had in fact agreed to cover only 10-15 percent of the
subject areas previously covered—predominantly those "high-tech"
areas of less relevance to construction. No Department had accepted
responsibility for the remaining 85-90 percent of funding, with
the result that without any conscious policy decision being made
Government support for the bulk of applied science research had
simply stopped—as had the research itself.
Presentation by David Strong, Managing Director,
BRE Environmental
BRE Environmental consisted of around 220 people,
focusing on the environmental aspects of construction. The energy
used in buildings accounted for nearly half of total United Kingdom
carbon emissions, with a further ten percent accounted for by
the construction industry. The waste generated from construction
was about 35 percent of total UK waste (about 150 million tonnes
per annum), and the industry used about six tonnes of building
materials per head of population per annum.
BRE Environmental's goal was to develop solutions
to deliver sustainable buildings—for instance, balancing
insulation against ventilation to ensure both energy efficiency
and health. The BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) had
been developed as the de facto methodology for setting standards
for overall environmental sustainability. It was likely that ODPM's
proposed sustainability code would be closely based on BREEAM.
However, there appeared to be a concern within ODPM that the BRE
might be given a monopoly if BREEAM were simply adopted. As a
result there was a possibility that Government would seek to "reinvent
the wheel", developing a new code of practice, and establishing
a new agency to administer it. The BRE had offered to assign ownership
of BREEAM wholly to the BRE Charitable Trust in an effort to allay
these concerns. The Sustainable Buildings Task Group had recommended
that the Government and BRE establish a joint venture to take
things forward, but so far the Government had failed to engage
with the BRE.
The aim of BREEAM was to drive the environmental
performance of buildings beyond existing Building Regulations.
The BRE did not itself conduct assessments, but trained and accredited
independent organisations who conducted BREEAM assessments. Certification
could be provided at design, construction or operation phases,
though many clients were currently focusing on the design stage.
BRE hoped to carry this forward to operation—one of the
advantages of PFI was that it gave companies a 30-year contract
to design and operate. Certification focused on the whole built
environment, not just energy consumption.
Site visits
The Committee visited the following facilities within
the BRE:
- Furnace/Burn Hall
- Exposure Rigs
- Environmental Chamber
- Test Houses
- Integer House
- Structures Laboratory
- Wind Tunnel
- Building 24
- Timber Library
- Environmental Office
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