An insight into how buildings of the future might be designed and serviced is provided by the City Academy in Hackney, winner of the award for new-build project of the year, for which Max Fordham LLP was consulting engineer. This project was designed to perform 40% better than required by Part L of the 2006 Building Regulations, which is a further 20% better than the 25% improvement due in the 2010 Building Regulations. It has a A-rated Energy Performance Certificate and a ‘Very good’ (63.8%) BREEAM rating. It received its first students in September 2009.

Exploiting renewable energy to its full potential requires installers to be adequately trained, a need that is acknowledged by the award for training initiative of the year. The first course in the UK relating to the installation of ground- and air-source heat pumps to be approved by UKAS was developed by Nu-Heat and training provider NICEIC and is presented at Nu-Heat’s training centre. The course forms part of the mandatory training for installers wishing to gain certification for the Microgeneration Certification Scheme.

Swire Properties Management (SPL) is no newcomer to working towards reducing energy use and carbon impact. Virtually ever since Festival Walk in Hong Kong was built in 1998, the company has been working on improving its energy performance. A reduction of 4115 MWh in 2008/9 alone followed 10 years of consistent and steady improvement, winning the award for client of the year — low-carbon operation.

The Turbocor compressor made by Danfoss marked a step change in compressor development and is now incorporated in chillers from several manufacturers. They include the Turbomiser chiller, which is the result of close collaboration between two UK companies, Klima-Therm and Cool-Therm, and Italian manufacturer Geoclima — and which was acclaimed product of the year in the CIBSE Awards.

A data centre without mechanical cooling has been achieved by consultants Norman Disney Young for EDS, an HP company. This data centre in the north east of England provides 8100 m2 of technical space and achieves a Tier 3+ rating on the standard of The Uptime Institute Tier Rating. The design strategy was to use outside air to directly cool IT equipment in the data halls, rather than chillers and chilled water, and won the category for technical innovation of the year.

When the energy consumption of a building is analysed to prepare a Display Energy Certificate, recommendations to reduce energy consumption in the future are made. A host of recommendations were made by low-carbon energy assessor Andrew Gardner of CCL Consulting for the Sheffield Park Hotel, winning for him one of the CIBSE Low Carbon Performance Awards.