Cobbetts Round Table: ‘Total divorce’ between building design and management

THERE is a total divorce between the design and management of new buildings in the UK.

And embracing a new mentality and philosophy towards buildings is the key for a greener future in the UK’s construction industry, Mark Abrams, Coventry University’s business development director believes.

Mr Abrams, who is business development lead on the universtiy’s  low impact buildings applied research programme, was speaking at TheBusinessDesk.com’s ‘greentech’ round table event, held in association with the Birmingham office of law firm Cobbetts.

He said there was “a general mistrust” among both businesses and consumers when it came to implementing green schemes.

“The finance side of it says ‘We want to build a building, our budget is X and we really don’t care how much it costs to run afterwards’,” he said.

“But there’s a total divorce about the design of the building and the use of the building.

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“The connection between designing a building, building a building and then understanding how to use it is incredible. That whole education and life cycle cost hasn’t really been explored well enough in the UK.

Click through to read our main report and meet the panellists from our Cobbetts Greentech Round Table.

“Germany is a long way ahead because they are building in efficiency because they actually care about what happens when they have handed over the keys.”

He added that in Germany, some construction companies maintain their buildings after they have handed them over to occupiers for 10 or 15 years.

“If they build a building that doesn’t quite work, but more importantly, if they don’t manage the use of the building during its lifetime, they don’t make their profit,” he added.

Discussing incentives for green initiatives, Cobbetts’ green law expert Hugh Goulbourne added: “Countries like Germany are way ahead of us in terms of some of these agendas and we really have to catch up. Let’s hope that we do by the end of 2011.”

Mark Clemson, chief executive of solar panel company New World Solar, said: “We have put so many schemes together, especially to commercial operations, and we think it’s going to fly and then it gets to the finance director and it crashes and burns.”

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