Bath report claims some building modellers ‘not fit for purpose’

According to the study, many building modelling professionals are no better than members of the public at assessing the energy performance of new homes and offices. This is leading to a large ‘performance gap’ between the predicted energy use and actual energy use of many buildings.

“The ‘performance gap’ is a problem that affects all new buildings as well as the refurbishment of older ones,” said lead investigator David Coley, Professor of Low Carbon Design at Bath University.

“Previous research has assumed the performance gap can be attributed to the construction and operation stages. However, we have revealed a new cause for the performance gap, that being the modelling illiteracy of building modelling professionals arising from the modellers being separated from the rest of the construction process and the final building.”

“The impact of the inaccuracies of building modelling professionals has severe financial and environmental implications for both the government’s global warming targets as well as building owners who are purchasing homes and other buildings that are sold to be energy efficient but in reality are not.”