Buro Happold wins five 2021 CIBSE Building Performance Awards

Buro Happold has been honoured with five CIBSE Building Performance Awards, including ‘Consultancy of the Year’ and the coveted ‘Building Performance Champion’ for the most award wins at the ceremony.

Now in their fourteenth year, the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) Awards recognise the people, products, innovations, initiatives and projects that demonstrate engineering excellence in the built environment. They are the only industry awards that focus on actual measured performance outcomes alongside design intent and performance specifications. Efficient low energy consumption coupled with outstanding health and wellbeing are the focal points of the award criteria.

This year the awards ceremony was a little different. On Thursday 25 February 2021, over 700 industry professionals attended a virtual awards ceremony to discover who would triumph across 15 keenly contested categories.

Buro Happold won five CIBSE award categories which celebrates both the people and projects behind our engineering consultancy practice:

  1. Building Performance Consultancy of the Year (over 300 employees) – Buro Happold
  2. Building Performance Champion – Buro Happold
  3. Covid-19 Achievement – Buro Happold Analytics team
  4. Project of the Year – Public Use – The House at Cornell Tech
  5. Learning and Development – UCL Post Project Review Guidelines.
The House at Cornell Tech and UCL’s Barlett School of Architecture.
Images: Iwan Baan and Richard Stonehouse

Our award wins are demonstrative of our leadership in building performance and our commitment to low energy and net zero carbon design, showcasing our exemplary performance individually, as a team and in conjunction with our clients and collaborators.

We are so proud to have won the ‘Consultancy of the Year’ again for the fourth year in a row, as well as a couple of excellent project wins. Building performance is a critical part of addressing climate emergency. Buro Happold has always been deeply committed to designing and delivering better buildings and working with our Clients to eliminate the performance gap. To have won ‘Building Performance Champion’ as well is truly reflective of our teams dedication and hard work.

Phil Lines, UK Director, Building Environments, Buro Happold

Our additional shortlisted entries were:

  1. Building Performance Engineer of the Year – Associate Director David Kingstone
  2. Project of the Year – Commercial/Industrial – Jack Copland Centre
  3. Project of the Year – International – The House at Cornell Tech
  4. Facilities Management – Wessex Water Headquarters 20-year POE.

Buro Happold also supported architectural firm BDP on their submission for the UCL Student Centre, which also made the shortlist or ‘Project of the Year – Public Use’. We are leading the post occupancy evaluation (POE) on the project.

Building Performance Consultancy of the Year (over 300 employees) and Building Performance Champion: Buro Happold

For the fourth consecutive year, Buro Happold has been honoured with the coveted title of ‘Building Performance Consultancy of the Year (over 300 employees)’ and CIBSE’s overall ‘Building Performance Champion’.

With over 40 years’ experience in building design and post occupancy evaluation (POE), we take a holistic approach to improving building performance across our projects, considering a range of inter-related issues such as energy, carbon, health, wellbeing, asset value and productivity.

This is a fantastic achievement by the amazing team at Buro Happold. To be awarded ‘Building Performance Champion’ recognises our leading work across the industry on net zero carbon, building performance and decarbonisation of existing buildings.

Duncan Price, Partner and Director of Sustainability, Buro Happold

Sustainability within building performance has been at the forefront of our practice since it was founded by Sir Ted Happold in 1976. Carbon neutrality and energy efficiency are principal to our design solutions for buildings. Having declared a climate emergency in 2019, we encouraged others in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC industry) to do the same through launching the Engineers Declare platform which now has 359 engineering organisations committing to deliver net zero carbon.

In 2020, we launched our global sustainability report, committing to be net zero carbon in our business operations by April 2021, a goal which we are on track to achieve. For projects, our target is that all new buildings will be net zero carbon in operation by 2030 and all existing by 2050. We have also developed a building performance dashboard to capture measured energy data on projects and track the progress of our sustainability commitments.

In addition, Buro Happold’s membership with the Building Performance Network (BPN) and our support of the Design for Performance’s (DfP) pioneering projects initiative are exemplary of our continued advocacy in tackling the climate emergency. We were also one of the first consultancy companies to sign the World Green Building Council’s (WGBC) ‘Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment’. Our open source BHoM platform also continues to drive innovation across the industry as a means to develop and share sustainable code at scale.

The CIBSE Awards are the only awards that put real performance at the heart of the judging criteria, rather than focusing solely on design intent. In our sector, this is critical to truly decarbonise the built environment.

Mark Dowson, Associate Director, Building Performance and Sustainability, Buro Happold

We are deeply grateful to be recognised by CIBSE for our global efforts in engineering, consultancy and advisory practices. We will continue to put building performance at the heart of our practice for many years to come.

Covid-19 Achievement: Buro Happold Analytics team

In response to Covid-19, Buro Happold’s Analytics team worked with seven leading UK and Irish universities to help them reopen their campuses and return to learning, alongside facilitating social distancing measures and promoting the health and wellbeing of students and staff.

At a time of great uncertainty and changing guidelines universities needed to:

  • Rapidly determine the capacities of spaces under different social distancing regimes
  • Devise new timetables and teaching approaches
  • Regulate the flow of people around campus and within buildings
  • Build flexibility and adaptability into their plans.

To address these challenges our Analytics team combined years of experience in human behaviour modelling with data analytics, predictive modelling tools and intuitive data analytics. New tools were developed to quickly assess and optimise the capacity of spaces under social distancing. These capacities were optimised together with other parameters such as the class duration, cleaning schedule, room occupancy and teaching hours to create a predictive model, made available through interactive dashboards.

The team are proud to have made a difference at a time of such universal difficulty and uncertainty. The impact on student and staff health and wellbeing, increased confidence, maximised building efficiency and student contact hours. The hundreds of millions of revenues protected for the universities is deeply rewarding for the team.

Buro Happold’s Analytics team wins Covid-19 Achievement Award.
Image: Buro Happold.

Project of the Year – Public Use: The House at Cornell Tech

Cornell Tech’s 270-foot-tall residential tower in New York City is the tallest and largest residential Passivhaus certified building in the world. 

The energy and carbon strategy for the project was based on two key factors: first, achieve Passive House certification and second, reduce greenhouse gas emissions in support of New York City’s 80×50 target. Health and wellbeing was also prioritised in the design, supported by the coveted LEED Platinum rating.

Implementing Passivhaus at this scale is the defining feature of this project. Buro Happold collaborated with the project team and material/equipment manufacturers to design engineering solutions for structural, MEP and lighting that met with local regulations, aligned with the project budget and schedule, and achieved criteria for Passive House, LEED and Energy Star.

The House at Cornell Tech wins Project of the Year in the Public Use category.
Image: Iwan Baan

Learning and Development: UCL Post Project Review Guidelines

University College London (UCL) has committed to achieve net zero carbon buildings by 2024 and to be a net zero carbon institution by 2030. As part of the university’s commitment to sustainability and continuous improvement, UCL have now launched ‘Post Project Review’ (PPR) guidelines developed in collaboration with Buro Happold and Alexi Marmot Associates.

The PPR guidelines aim to ensure that buildings are performing as intended and that the lessons learnt are documented so that they can be applied to future UCL projects. The PPR includes a Project Implementation Review (PIR) to evaluate how effective the process of conceptualising and delivering the project was carried out. For projects over £10m or business critical, a full post occupancy evaluation (POE) is also carried out. The lessons learned are held in a central database and made available to all designers.

UCL are currently in year six of a 10 year £1.25bn capital programme with 14 projects on-site and 177 projects completed and in operation. In its first two years of adoption, the post project review process has been applied to 10 major projects (Student Centre, 22 Gordon Street, Bentham House, Kathleen Lonsdale, Wilkins, Solar House, Here East 1 & 2, Institute of Education and Bloomsbury Theatre), formally capturing the lessons learned. Running alongside these activities, two to three year post occupancy evaluations are underway for the Student Centre, Bloomsbury Theatre, Kathleen Lonsdale, Astor College and Institute of Education.

Exterior image of the new Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL. Image: Richard Stonehouse
Barlett School of Architecture at University College London (UCL).
Image: Richard Stonehouse

Our work on the Jack Copland Centre and Wessex Water Headquarters 20-year POE were finalists in the ‘Commercial/Industrial’ and ‘Facilities Management’ project categories respectively. In addition to The House at Cornell Tech winning ‘Public Use’ it was shortlisted for ‘Project of the Year – International’.

Buro Happold Associate Director David Kingstone was also the runner-up for the prestigious ‘Building Performance Engineer of the Year’ award.

Project of the Year – Commercial/Industrial: Jack Copland Centre (shortlisted)

The Jack Copland Centre in Edinburgh is the new national centre for processing and testing of blood, tissues and cells for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS). It is an outstanding example of a commercial building that balances state-of-the-art healthcare facilities with sustainable design principles.

Our team incorporated a number of systems into their building services strategy to help the centre prioritise energy efficiency within their operational performance. These include gas powered combined heat and power systems, extensive use of natural daylight and ventilation, heat recovery systems and photovoltaic panels on the roof. The team also designed a comprehensive building management system to control and monitor the operation of these separate elements.

Patients and staff relaxing in the gardens of the Jack Copland Centre
The Jack Copland Centre was shortlisted for Project of the Year in the Industrial/Commercial category.
Image: Andrew Lee

Facilities and Management: Wessex Water Headquarters 20-year POE (shortlisted)

The Wessex Water headquarters opened in 2000 and was conceived as an “exemplar building” in terms of its sustainability credentials. The building employs many reliable building performance concepts such as natural ventilation, thermal mass, open-plan working, good daylight, orientation and effective solar shading.

What is exceptional about this project is how the design team’s varied architectural and engineering disciplines were brought together, resulting in a single, cohesive and successful design when BREEAM, Soft Landings and Post Occupancy Evaluation were only just emerging at the time of construction.

During the first three years of handover, a 50% reduction in small power energy was achieved through the aftercare process. The relationship between Wessex Water and our design team continued for the intervening 20 years with ongoing energy performance evaluations. Recording data enabled Buro Happold and Wessex Water to analyse options for re-planning workspaces and identifying areas which were able to accept increased occupancy density. Overall, the building has proven to be sustainable and resilient to changing demands.

wessex water sustainable office head quarters
Buro Happold’s work with Wessex Water was shortlisted for the Facilities Management award.
Image: Buro Happold

Building Performance Engineer of the Year –Associate Director David Kingstone (shortlisted)

Associate Director David Kingstone was named runner-up for the ‘Building Performance Engineer of the Year’ award for his expertise in the energy auditing, dynamic simulation, post occupancy evaluation, design for performance, NABERS UK, sustainability and healthy design principles.

David has been working in building services engineering for more than 30 years, so the shortlisting is a timely acknowledgement of his commitment to the industry. From advising building services engineers on how to improve their designs and utilising building simulation modelling to learning lessons from post occupancy evaluation, he deeply understands the importance of performance evaluation.

David has worked with my team on a number of assignments, most notably on our ESOS compliance work. During this time, he offered great value and insight into how our buildings are run and managed. David always sought to deliver his analysis in a non-technical, relatable and above all non-stuffy fashion.


John Davies, Head of Sustainability, Derwent London

For more information about Buro Happold’s award-winning services, discover our building performance specialism.