Winter meeting

This year the meetings were held in Chicago, in conjunction with the largest HVAC&R exhibition ever.

This year it was attended by a significant contingent from CIBSE, led by current President Donald Leeper, who was invited to give two seminar presentations - on Ethics and Advocacy - and past president Graham Manly.

Over the past two years CIBSE has worked with ASHRAE to strengthen our relations. Under the new governance of CIBSE, each board member takes responsibility for an area of the institution's activity. Manly undertook to develop our relationship with ASHRAE, and has committed to continue this year and next.

This is already paying dividends in several areas where we have been able to identify common interests and share information.

In the area of building performance, both the UK and North America (as well as Canada and the rest of Europe), are looking to develop methods for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of whole buildings.

This is driven by incentives and legislative demands in the USA and the EU to cut energy use in buildings. As a result there is a need to quantify and audit energy savings of buildings. We are pleased to be able to work with ASHRAE to take forward this initiative where the UK and Europe already has a significant body of experience.

The PROBE studies, pioneered in this country and promoted through BSj, show the world what can be done to assess the true energy performance of buildings. In the same way, PROBE pioneers Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman have championed the concept of post occupancy evaluation of buildings, to establish how well they really work in practice. We are now seeing them embraced here with enthusiasm.

Another issue of common interest to both CIBSE and ASHRAE is climate change. I am delighted to say that at the Winter meeting we were able to agree a joint statement between CIBSE and ASHRAE on our commitment to cut energy use in buildings and carbon emissions, to counter the effects of climate change.

This joint statement appears in full below, and on the CIBSE website, and sets the scene for exploring further areas of collaboration. We look forward to developing our own trans-Atlantic special relationship.