Green Gown Awards – 2016 – Built Environment

Built Environment

This category recognises new or refurbished buildings or student residences in tertiary education which have good energy and environmental performance. As such buildings sometimes fail to perform to their design specifications, quantitative evidence of actual performance in practice, and ideally of a post occupancy evaluation to identify problems and means of improving them, will be given special weight in judging.

Applications featuring refurbished buildings are especially welcomed, and the difficulties of achieving similar levels of performance to new build will be taken into account in the judging process. Please note that judges will look especially favourably at entries which go beyond regulations or planning conditions which would have to be met anyway.

There is much evidence that the energy and environmental design specifications of buildings are often not achieved in practice. Hence, the judges for this category will put considerable weight on data which shows that this has happened. Please describe the provenance and reliability of data used for this purpose (e.g. actual metered data from X sites within the building). Details and outcomes of any commissioning, quality control and post occupancy evaluation activities which occurred will also be of significant judging interest. Information about problems identified, and responses made, will be seen as a positive commitment to improvement rather than being penalised by the judges (provided that they do not undermine the entire rationale of the application!). All data within the application should use metric units wherever feasible. Normalised figures per square meter of gross floor space should be provided for capital and relevant operating costs (e.g. energy consumption). Capital costs should also be broken down as much as possible (e.g. build, fitting-out, plant, and fee costs) to enable detailed comparisons between applications.

In line with the broader sustainability agenda, judges will be keen to see evidence, if applicable, to the project on carbon reduction. However judges will consider how effective carbon reduction has been applied to the project in a broader sustainability context rather than awarding significant weighting to this element.  Therefore, projects not containing this element are still encouraged to apply. Where applicable, provide quantitative clear data to support claims being made and include overall tonnes of CO2 saved using the DEFRA/DECC conversion factors: http://www.ukconversionfactorscarbonsmart.co.uk/. Include, where appropriate, metrics such as: carbon savings relative to output/activity. This might be tCO2/student or tCO2/staff member and/or cost of a project relative to the amount of carbon that has been saved, i.e. £/tCO2.