Energy performance certificates will be required on all buildings from 1 October 2008 and earlier for some types of building. Nevertheless building owners appear hesitant to start the certification process, and this could create a suppliers’ market when they do.

It is easy to find reasons for this uncertainty. EPCs can only be issued by accredited assessors, the first of which were not expected to be available until mid-March. In addition, the government has still to release its decision on the benchmark building consumption and the certificate grading bandwidths. However these delays will only affect the presentation and signature on the final certificate, which are minor parts of the process.

Most of the work behind EPCs consists of surveys, data collection and calculations. This will be carried out to long-established principles which stand on their own, and there is no reason why the process cannot start now.

The operational rating will be used to provide the display energy certificates (DECs) for public buildings. The means of calculation – actual consumption divided by floor area normalised for typical office use – is a familiar procedure carried out on many buildings for more than 20 years.

The means of calculating the asset rating which is required to provide the energy performance certificates (EPCs) for all other residential buildings uses well established and approved software packages and is unlikely to change.

The most time-consuming part of the process is data retrieval. In many cases the information is unavailable and contingency plans have to be decided and implemented.

Building owners and managers should be gathering data now.

Roger Smith BSc CEng FCIBSE MIMech, engineering management principal, Hoare Lea

Source

Building Sustainable Design

Postscript

See news analysis - 'So you want to be an environmental performance assessor'