Building performance evaluation | India customised BPE on a different level Tim Dwyer digests research, led by Rajat Gupta, that investigates the opportunity to develop and nurture adoption of building performance evaluation that is of practical use in the booming green building marketplace of India I ndia has the third-largest economy in the world and is growing rapidly: its energy consumption has almost doubled since 2000. Buildings in India currently account for 41% of the countrys final energy consumption, and there is great potential for continued rapid growth and urbanisation key drivers for energy trends. The Indian Green Building Council claims India has the second-largest registered green building footprint, with more than 437million m2 and around 4,363 projects registered for green building ratings (as of November 2017). In common with many countries, however, this movement lacks an important link: ensuring that the design intent of such buildings is actually realised. Research at Oxford Brookes University led by Rajat Gupta, with colleague Matt Gregg and Sanyogita Manu, Prasad Vaidya and Maaz Dixit, of CEPT University, Ahmedabad has investigated the feasibility of a customised building performance evaluation (BPE) approach for the Indian sub-continent. Focusing on the experience and understanding of academic experts (as they are likely to be the lead disseminators of any BPE method) as well as of industry professionals (architects, engineers and policy-makers) they looked at the drivers and barriers for implementing BPEbased methods and, particularly, their incorporation into educational curricula. This revealed that a key challenge to the adoption of BPE is a lack of trained people to teach it. In addition, Indias building industry compared with those of many other countries has less documentation of design decisions, more freedom during construction, fewer tested and certified products, less formalised building operation, and limited access to the costly equipment required for performance evaluation. The I-BPE framework consists of the methods and potential delivery routes for its adoption in education, research and industry. The methods used for performance evaluation of buildings in India were compared, by the researchers, with those commonly used for BPE studies internationally. With input from experts in India, this helpedtoprioritise methods and indicate which ones may berelevant. The I-BPE framework (as in Table 1) includes five need to know elements covering technical and non-technical aspects of building performance. These are: n Review of design intent through design documentation and interviews with the design and construction team n Technical building survey, covering inspection of the building fabric, energy systems and controls n Energy assessment using annual energy bills/meter readings, monitoring of utility meters, sub-metering and monitoring of individual plug loads Differences between asset and operation may be greater in India because of the variability in the way buildings are operated 30 January 2019 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Jan19 pp30-32 India Building performance.indd 30 21/12/2018 15:02