EWS Coal drops Yard opens to public Two Victorian coal sheds at King s Cross in London have been converted into a 100m retail development by architect Heatherwick Studio. The merging of two gabled roofs demanded a performance-based approach, so services engineer Hoare Lea tested and validated everything from pedestrian wind comfort and safety to daylight access. Seven historic chimney stacks were used to conceal extract and heat rejection systems, and a network of underground services linked buildings on the site. Historic architectural characteristics were integrated into the new design by hiding service corridors in the existing building fabric. Heating and cooling for the 61 retailers was supplied by district heating and cooling networks. Industry alarm as turmoil continues over EU exit Proposals for extended transition hugely unhelpful , says BESA The deal or no deal furore surrounding Brexit has been widely condemned by industry figures. Housebuilders and construction companies such as Bovis, Persimmon and Redrow saw the value of their shares fall by as much as 5% as a result of the turmoil surrounding the agreement with the EU, before some calm was restored to the markets. As CIBSE Journal went to press, Prime Minister Theresa May was still struggling to persuade Parliament to support the deal, and an extended transition period up to the end of 2021 was suggested. This has been criticised as hugely unhelpful by the president of the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA). Tim Hopkinson told the associations 2018 National Conference that the one thing businesses crave above all else is certainty and the proposal to extend transition arrangements would further delay investment decisions. He also criticised the Prime Minister for labelling construction craft occupations as low skilled and, so, subject to the strictest immigration restraints after Brexit. These are crucial skills that will be central to many of our projects, said Hopkinson. Other business leaders said controls on key construction workers from the EU would be disastrous. Former cabinet minister Caroline Flint urged politicians to allow the industry to find solutions. It would be better if government did fewer things better, she said in her keynote address to the BESA Conference. However, she said concerns over how Brexit will affect the skills gap should not mask home-grown problems. As a country we have to be honest about how we have not focused enough on training the people we need. We should not be relying on other countries to train our people for us, Flint said. Pilot projects reveal UK performance gap Industry-funded initiative Design for Performance (DfP), which was established to tackle the performance gap, has tested elements of an office rating scheme based on measurable performance outcomes. In pilot studies carried out over two years, six new offices at varying stages of design and construction tested key aspects of the DfP approach, based on the Australian office energy-rating system, Nabers. In all cases, the study found that operational energy targets were not being specified within contractual requirements, so the priority and level of scrutiny that should be placed on operational energy performance was not filtering down the supply chain. The study also highlighted that none of the pilot projects was able to measure base building performance easily because of inadequate sub-metering design. Advanced HVAC simulation is also not requested as part of the standard design process. When running Nabers energy ratings using actual operational energy data for two pilot buildings which had base building energydata available the results were poorer thanthe design ratings suggested they should be. One was 0.5 stars lower, achieving a 4-star rating, and the other was 2.5 stars lower, attaining a 2.5-star rating. Robert Cohen, technical lead at DfP, said the systemic failings in the current designfor-compliance process were one of the key findings of the pilots. Read more about DfP on page 24. www.cibsejournal.com December 2018 7 CIBSE Dec18 pp07 News.indd 7 23/11/2018 15:51