Document Type

Conference Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

Architecture engineering

Publication Details

Paper presented at FM for a Sustainable Future, 12th EuroFM research symposium, Prague, Czech Republic, 22-24 May 2013.

Abstract

Improving the sustainability of built assets in the light of uncertain futures is a major challenge facing the Facilities Management profession. A changing climate poses significant challenges to the performance of built assets in-use and could potentially render many built assets prematurely obsolete. How business clients plan for such changes formed the focus of a research project undertaken by the authors. This paper presents the findings of a 12 month Action Research project that sought to identify the impact of future climate change on the performance of a new £75m education building over the first 60 years of operation. The Action Research project involved a series of meetings and workshops between the building’s design team (Architects, Engineers and Cost Consultants) and the Client’s Facilities Management (FM) Department where the impact that a range of future weather scenarios could have on the buildings performance in-use were evaluated. Technical and operational adaptation solutions were developed for those scenarios that were deemed ‘high impact’ and selected interventions were integrated into the building life cycle as pro-active adaptation steps in the built asset management plan. This paper will describe the adaptation framework used to inform the development of the various scenarios/adaptation solutions and discuss the role of the FM in the process. The paper concludes that the presence of the FM Department in the design team was critical to the development of viable climate change adaptation solutions.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/ang9-5g16

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