Energy Efficiency in Office Buildings

Executive Summary
The measures taken to achieve efficient ways of generating renewable energy and
lowering carbon emission in existing buildings and the ones still in the process of
design, is significant enough to reduce the cost of energy. This has therefore
increased the number of national and regional policies regarding the promotion of
better performance of buildings. Other issues such as campaign against emission of
greenhouse gasses, and other promotion like the economic stimulus programs have
driven the energy efficiency demand from commercial buildings to be heightened.
the methods used in performing energy assessments are sometimes laborious and
costly and therefore technology has been embraced to make this process easy. The
project herein is built on the promise of coming up with a better performing building
that is sustainable for posterity.
The proposed office building is of a two-storey building of a round 15m tall. The
tasks are to take the drawings made by the structural engineer and the architect
and start analysing what the architect had in mind. The occupation of the building,
since it is an office is expected to be from 8 am to around 6pm in the evening.
Averagely, a person working in an office needs a work area of around 120sq ft, a
report given by office agents from King Sturge (Dowse, 2015). The average volume
of the office area needs to be around 11 cubic meters, that is where the ceiling is
projected to be 2.4m, and where the ceiling is projected to be around 3.0m high,
the minimum floor area needs to be 3.7m2.
These measures were accurately taken by the modelling software from Autodesk,
Revit MEP, and Autodesk Ecotect which takes into considerations the green building
technology by basically issuing information. These measures need to be taken up
early in the stage of designing, so that different professionals are briefed to make
certain changes and their cost implications before construction takes place. The first
task was taking the proposed measurements from the architect and other
considerations from the structural engineer and doing the modelling of the building.
Revit software is programmed such that it takes the weather conditions of that
proposed site location, and does a rough estimate of the energy audits. There are
parameters that are to be fed into the system and it generates the energy report.
However, in our proposed building, since the client did not want the HVAC system,
the design had to be conducted just like that, without those devices and equipment
fitted in.
Thermal analysis was also performed considering the office requirements in the
assessment, it was deemed that the office building be heated to 21OC from the
month of 1st January to 30th April, and 1st of October, and 31st December. This was
recommended that it be done when there’s occupancy on the office from averagely
7am to 6pm. The consideration in the geometry modelled, was built in the premise
that it would provide comfort during working hours. Other adjustments that is
recommended to the client is the reduction of employees, giving them leaves
especially during summer when the heat is great. In the winter no one is to be given
leave since the heat retention is required. Still on heat retention, the client was
advised to make sure the ceiling that he using can insulates the building well and

makes sure, with that, there’s the need to have windows insulations and doors so
that not much heat or cold is lost during occupancy.
Introduction
The building in question is a multi-storey building of an office block, around 15
meters tall, proposed to be built in Manchester area. The aim of the project was to
minimize energy consumption and embrace the green energy technology. Also, the
design was to take into account the fact that the natural lighting and air circulation
was to be used by having a natural ventilation. To be able to keep the air quality in
check. The audit performed included the heating and cooling. It is important for
building to seal off cold air at times, and permit the same when temperatures are
very high. We performed something called energy assessment or energy audit. The
natural ventilation was necessary to allow the natural air to get into the building
and also for less consumption of power, when there’ll be the use of electricity to
connect to the indoor and the outdoor units for maintaining the air or conditioning
it. Though even with all this, the client will have to cautious of dust and carbon
coming from outside, or odours. Because much as the air is natural, the flipside has
to be looked at as well. Apart from the ventilation, the energy conservation also
goes with the building insulation. This was essential too because when we subject
the building to cold, there will be energy spent in heating or providing warmth in the
house.
The modelling technique that was employed was the use of Revit MEP for Building
Information Modelling (BIM). This is what was used to have the mechanical,
electrical, and plumbing solutions. This Autodesk BIM software offers a range of
applications that allows engineers and draftsmen to do a detailed design, estimate,
and do a virtual installation of MEP services. This software even helps in fabrications
of materials that are to be used in a construction site. This is the software we used
from the onset, the designed was carried through from the architect to the
engineers where each engineer considered the energy conservation and building
performance in their design. The use of this software found favour with many
because it saves time and it is very easy to use. With a touch of a button, estimates
are done. Simulations are also easy to be carried out with this software.
Assumptions Made
When simulating and finding the solution in terms of knowing the region where the
design is being carried out, the images and the coordinates are taken and fed into
the computer for energy analysis and other simulations. Assumptions is that google
is accurate and knows the present climatic conditions and the weather conditions
and therefore whatever it gives is gospel truth. Therefore, the U-values are
determined from the designs and assumptions of the weather conditions. The
design also assumes that people and computers produce uniform heat and the
occupancy is also done to standards in such a way that the space allocation per
person is taken into considerations. This software does not take into considerations
the surroundings, the environmental conditions, presently. It only deals with the
standards that are ideal and only favour the ideal conditions. Google maps are by