Tasty takeaways from a day demystifying building standards 

Lessons from the 1^st joint CoP meeting bringing together
Architects & Designers and Social Housing Developers

On 25 April 2024, more than 60 people attended our first joint Communities of Practice (CoP) meeting, which took place in at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) in Swansea, with more than 25 people joining online. Audience takeaways and presentations now available below.

The hybrid event brought together Social Housing Developers and Architects and Designers to learn about AECB CarbonLite and EPC A standards, form factor (a measure of how compact a building is), and how to identify common issues and quality in terms of achieving these building standards in practice. 

“Our very own Andrew Simmonds and Tim Martel went along to a brilliant Woodknowledge Wales event last week – they enjoyed an array of interesting presentations and discussions and came back buoyed and enthusiastic and we are very keen to explore areas of collaboration.” The AECB 

How to bake your construction cake

Just one of the tasty takeaways (pun intended) for participants was the analogy between building and baking. If you missed the event, please do enjoy the presentations and other audience takeaways listed below. 

PV, batteries and other tech can be the icing on the cake but first we must bake the cake in the form of good building fabric

Alun Watkins, Director, Kalm Consultancy Services

“The power and knowledge of having the two groups face to face in the room and being able to share real-life experience in an open and transparent setting – between those who are working with these standards and those that are aware but not applying them in their practice – made this event so strong.” Rachel Cook, Head of Networks and Communities of Practice (CoP) manager, Woodknowledge Wales 

AECB CarbonLite and EPC A standards demystified

Expert practitioners, Alun Watkins from Kalm Consultancy and Jaime Moya from Spring Design laid out the differences between AECB (Association for Environment Conscious Building) CarbonLite and EPC A (energy performance certificate) standards. The presenters demystified these using real-life project examples to illustrate how to quantify affordable warmth and decarbonisation. They talked about form factor, shading and orientation and how these factors map onto AECB CarbonLite standards in more detail. 

“Looking at form factor, which is still not a core concept for all architects to consider in their designs, and getting the technical breakdown of how this looks in real life by comparing two actual project examples, was really useful for both client side and designers.” Diana Waldron, Head of Built Environment and co-lead Architects & Designers CoP, Woodknowledge Wales. 

“Encompassing real-life examples of properties illustrating in a hands-on way what social housing providers should consider and why, when building new or retrofitting existing housing stock to EPC A and AECB CarbonLite standards. This event underlined the importance of having conversations early in the process with architects and designers and how to engage residents around the impact and functionality of their low-energy, high-performance homes.” David Hedges, Head of Housing and co-lead Social Housing Developers CoP, Woodknowledge Wales. 

Getting hands-on with CWIC’s PODs

Rob Thomas from Hiraeth Architects delivered an on-site presentation explaining the benefits and purpose of the UWTSD CWIC (Construction Wales Innovation Centre) PODs. These hands-on educational PODs are used to demonstrate methods for identifying the common factors and quality issues which present barriers to achieving the AECB CarbonLite  and EPC A building standards. Deliberately designed with faults, the PODs highlight site-relevant issues such as thermal bridging, incorrect instalment of insulation, and vapour barriers. They have been built to two different standards so comparisons can be made between building regulation specifications and higher, near-Passivhaus, standards.  

“Seeing what a big difference something that looks fairly insignificant is making in practice when measured – like a piece of insulation being a few centimetres out – was eye-opening for both architects and social housing developers.” Diana Waldron 

Audience feedback and takeaways 

Participants also expressed an interest in learning more about: 

• form factor (a measure of how compact a building is). 
• the need to embed Planning Policy Wales (PPW) energy hierarchy for planning in practice – planning departments often still create barriers to the achievement of more sustainable outcomes. 
• the potential to use CWIC’s Pods as learning tools to demonstrate the practical processes behind BPE (building performance evaluation) testing with architect’s offices or clients 

This event clearly responded to members’ needs for forging relationships on personal and professional levels. Rumour has it that a significant number of participants continued their conversations into the evening hours in a pub nearby.

Enjoy your own slice of the cake

More tasty takeaways

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