Grundfos UK Summit puts sustainability within Commercial Building Services in focus

The summit brought together leading contactors, consultants and senior engineers, sustainability directors and representatives of CIBSE, all experts who face decisions every day on energy and sustainability, in an open and inclusive environment where everyone was encouraged to contribute.

Against the backdrop of London’s Rosewood Hotel in Holborn, Grundfos’ UK Managing Director Glynn Williams, welcomed a guest list of 120 with one of his favourite quotes: “Net Zero is a Team Sport”.

Like many of life’s biggest challenges, sustainability and Net Zero are better faced by a team of experts who can help companies and individuals to assess and measure where their biggest challenges lie, and to explain the depth of support that is now available to help guide them along the journey.

After welcoming the delegates, Glynn went on to the company had taken every possible opportunity to optimise sustainability across the event.

This may feel like a small thing, but it is indicative of the precautions we must all now take to ensure that we companies who have raised sustainability to the very top of their commercial agenda.

He then handed over to Ross Crighton, Senior Regional

Sales Manager, Grundfos CBS Aftermarket, to explain the crucial role that our existing commercial buildings must play in meeting Net Zero targets. Existing buildings in the UK currently use between 20% and 50% more energy than they should, he explained, so this should

Many of these buildings are 10 years old and more, and the technology then available was nothing like as pumps that can judge for themselves when the system adjustments to maintain optimisation.

Grundfos has a bank of data to show just how much the new generation of pumps can reduce energy use. These high-performance systems can recover the cost of the installation, sometimes in little more than a year, giving users free energy savings for years to come. The Grundfos Aftermarket department has a team of experts that will carry out basic energy checks for free, giving users an initial guide to problems and where they may lie.

There was real excitement as Ross introduced Thomas Schroder, Grundfos Climate Director, who explained the company’s overriding desire to make life better for people throughout the world, moving from ambition to action by bringing clean water to millions, setting up charitable businesses to support the underprivileged and those isolated communities in some of the world’s toughest environments, or developing new and innovative systems to protect precious water supplies

The spotlight then turned to two other impressive industry leaders who are now helping to shape operations around the world by re-shaping not only the design, but the performance of our buildings.

For Mace, Paul Connolly, the company’s Head of Building Services Construction, gave a spell-binding account of the company’s sustainable development, from becoming a carbonneutral business in 2020, to their pledge to cut their own emissions by 10% every year, and the new platform they are developing that will save clients 10million tonnes of CO2 by 2026. He explained how they did it, why they did it and why it has proved so successful to their future plans, reinforcing the collaborative effort of all, including knowledge sharing.

Next up was Sharon Maynard, Skanska’s Head of Sustainability, who went on to discuss the carbon evaluation and tools to support the company’s plans to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by the end of this decade, and to reach as well as reducing carbon intensity by 130 tonnes, per £million pounds of revenue, by 2030.

But it would not be a summit without an opportunity to exchange views and plans in an open forum. So, after a thank you to the delegates for their time and to the presenters for their interesting insights, everyone was invited to a “marketplace” with event sponsors Adey, Ideal and Victaulic, where they discussed problems and solutions with industry experts, networked with colleagues and made useful contacts with industry guests, including representatives of CIBSE.

They were also able to see demonstrations of recent developments in sustainable pumping, including the Grundfos Delta and MIXIT, and the TPE system with its IE5 motor – the were able to discuss recent developments in different areas treatment from sponsors Victaulic, Ideal and Adey.

Exciting new chapter