Introducing Energy

Introducing Energy Synergy™

The future of modern sustainable construction?

As the UK construction industry battles through the impacts of Covid-19, looking beyond the current challenges has proven paramount for national contractor Willmott Dixon. After launching its 2030 sustainable development strategy in the midst of a global pandemic, the contractor continues to signify its commitment to sustainable economic recovery.

Francesca Wilkinson, assistant environment manager, explores how Willmott Dixon’s innovative Energy Synergy™ consultancy offering ensures its projects exceed customer expectations.

In response to the UK government’s legislation to achieve net zero emissions on all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – corporations and SMEs alike shifted their focus to deliver a more sustainable way of operating. As businesses look to follow in the green footsteps of their industry leaders, national contractor Willmott Dixon has jumped ahead of the curve with the development of its ambitious, sector-leading sustainable strategy.

Long gone are the days where a construction company could simply just pledge to ‘use more sustainable materials’ or ‘optimise premanufactured design’ – the impact of the construction sector is far reaching.

Willmott Dixon’s ‘Now or Never; our decisive decade’ strategy, is built around three key themes: Building Lives, Better Planet and Brilliant Buildings. However, it is the contractor's innovative service offering within the latter that is already presenting great return on investment for its customers.

Alongside innovative consultancy offerings, the company has also pledged that its new buildings and refurbishment projects will be zero

operational carbon in ten years’ time and net zero embodied carbon by 2040. Its supply chain partners will also be net zero operational carbon by 2040, ten years ahead of the UK government’s target.

Energy Synergy™ - sustainability embedded

Willmott Dixon’s Energy SynergyTM consultancy service grew out of the contractor's experience delivering Passivhaus schemes. The contractor’s work as a founding member of the UK’s Passivhaus Trust to deliver schemes such as the George Davis Centre at the University of Leicester, highlighted the requirement for better energy prediction and monitoring in use, to help the contractor and its customers to fully achieve the best building performance benefits.

Francesca Wilkinson at Willmott Dixon said: “Contractors normally deliver projects to theoretical predicted energy standards (EPCs). However, buildings rarely meet these. CIBSE has recently estimated that completed projects can consume two to five times more energy than estimated at the design stage, with a significant proportion of this coming from unregulated energy uses such as fit-out equipment and IT systems.

“With the approval of our Board, we saw this as an opportunity for us to use our expertise and create a competitive advantage for our customers. As energy usage in the built environment contributes c.20% to the UK’s carbon footprint, solving this issue would make a big difference to the overall sustainability target of the UK.”

Collaboration is key; Energy SynergyTM sees the contractor work closely with its customers from the inception of a project, throughout the build process to completion and beyond – delivering assured building performance based on real-life measures.

The Willmott Dixon team then works with its customers once they have occupied a building, gathering detailed and ongoing performance data. This is then compared to the modelled energy performance over a two-to-three-year period post-completion, allowing the team to truly understand how a building is performing and how it differs from the assumptions made during design.

Francesca added: “Evaluating data regularly ensures that our facilities operate as designed, provide our customers with total transparency around their building’s performance, and deliver cost savings through optimised energy performance – offering that allimportant value for money.

“Energy Synergy™ is a valuable proposition for most customers but is a particularly great offering for those with high energy usage – the service gives specific insight and recommendations to reduce operational budgets. For example, it has already proven valuable in education, higher education and health markets, and where our customers are owner-operators of leisure centres, commercial offices, or hotels.

“Energy Synergy™ is also an in-house solution to the increased demands of BREEAM through the provision of an operational model of building performance, allowing our customers to achieve the highest ratings of Excellent and Outstanding.”

Endorsing its projects from both a physical construction and an energy performance basis, not only provides a great return for Willmott Dixon’s customers but also helps to forge those all-important long-lasting collaborative relationships. The contractor has found that by boosting its knowledge of its customer base, its teams can fully understand how their projects are actually being used, this in turn can directly be used to improve the design and performance requirements of a building on a fully bespoke level.

Francesca added: “In our experience, customers are usually aware that they have an energy budget problem but feel that there isn’t anything they can do to challenge or resolve it without a large investment of time, resource and finance. Where Energy Synergy™ differs is that we can fully explore why systems are not working as predicted and put actions in place to resolve the issue. This gives customers visibility and greater certainty over the running costs of a facility within the design stage of projects – it ultimately helps us to actively manage and optimise energy usage, avoiding unnecessary wastage.”

Energy Synergy™ – in practice

Over the past five years, Willmott Dixon’s Energy SynergyTM offering has continued to grow both in popularity and scope – now playing a pivotal role in the company’s sustainable future. Despite being optimised on many high-profile projects across the UK spanning several sectors and industries – some of the contractors’ best results with the consultancy service to date can be identified within the University of Warwick Sport and Wellness Hub.

Since its completion, the £37m Hub has played a pivotal role in supporting the university’s ambition of becoming the “most physically active campus community in the UK”, having replaced all former on-campus health and fitness facilities. The University has also committed to achieving net zero

carbon across its activities by 2030 of the project, through to Willmott through to domestic hot water. for direct emissions and is actively Dixon’s post-completion innovative “Energy Synergy™ has enabled progressing plans to achieve this. Energy Synergy service, our the Sports Hub to become the most

Opening its doors in 2019, this objectives and aims for the energy-efficient leisure centre in the 40,000m2, state-of-the-art facility development have been exceeded UK, performing 27.5% better than boasts 15,500m2 of indoor space, every step of the way. Willmott CIBSE’s Energy Benchmark. As a including: a multi-functional sports Dixon’s specialist energy consultancy direct result of our development hall; the biggest gym in the higher has not only given us excellent work, the University of Warwick education sector; a 25m-long, 12-lane visibility and certainty over the has been able to recruit a full-time swimming pool; 17m-high indoor running costs of the development, internal role to review all of its climbing walls; fitness suites; and but it has also allowed us to address building performance, by optimising squash courts. User comfort and sustainability challenges at every budget that would have previously reconfiguration of the space were stage and really get the best possible been spent on energy consumption. at the heart of the project and it has performance out of our state-of-the- This has ultimately helped to support benefited from smart climate controls art facility.” a 46% reduction in its carbon and user customisation technologies. As part of the consultancy emissions within the past ten years.” These include coolant technology to offering, the contractor continued Joel Cardinal, Head of Energy provide the right temperature for to work with the university's and Sustainability, at the University any given sport and automatically sustainability team post project of Warwick said: Willmott Dixon’s adjusted lighting in key rooms to completion and during building Energy Synergy™ process is very create the optimal ambience at the occupancy, to ensure the Hub comprehensive, and has enabled touch of a button. was performing well and meeting us to substantially reduce energy

Lisa Dodd-Mayne, director of its predicted targets. By offering consumption and carbon emissions sport and active communities at the specialist in-house energy efficiency from our building stock. We are now University of Warwick, said: “Here consultants, who accurately estimate targeting, through working more at the university, we are client-led, the energy consumption of projects closely with our contractors and meaning everything we do needs to during the design process, as well consultants, greater knowledge of support the health and wellbeing as monitoring during occupancy to embodied carbon within our buildings of our students, staff and the wider suggest improvements, and by just so that more informed decisions can community. Therefore, it was vital making marginal energy changes at be made at the design stage with the that the Sports Hub became more the facility, the firm was able to save intention of reducing indirect carbon than a standard leisure facility, the university more than £40,000 and emissions.” providing a real positive impact for a carbon saving of 98.5 teCO2e within James Breckon, Director of our community and on our wider its first year of operation. Estates, at the University of Warwick sustainability mission. Francesca said: “To achieve said, “My experience of working with

“Now that the project is complete, the university’s ambitious goals Willmott Dixon to deliver some of our we are very proud to be running for the facility, extensive in-house major capital projects has enabled one of the most sustainable higher monitoring was required once the the professional people within both education leisure facilities in the building was opened to identify organisations involved to really UK – the Sports Hub’s success can further energy savings. We get to grips with the sustainability ultimately be attributed to the strong embedded our Energy SynergyTM agenda and assist greatly in collaborative relationships that process into the after-build service delivering positive results.” occurred throughout the whole build -this involved monitoring operational process. By working collaboratively Alan Macklin use across 12 categories from from the preconstruction stages heating, ventilation, and pumps, For mor information please visit www.willmottdixon.co.uk