CIBSE East Anglia Engineering Excellence Awards
The focus of the CIBSE East Anglia Engineering Excellence Award is on demonstrable ‘excellence’ in the provision of Mechanical and Electrical engineering services in buildings. Candidates who entered were asked to supply information under a range of criteria.
2023 Winner
The award for the CIBSE East Anglia, Project of the Year Award goes to Eric Benton for leading the Building Services and Sustainable Design elements for Helimed House.
The Project comprised the creation of a new Headquarters for East Anglia Air Ambulance at Norwich Airport to consolidate the Charities resources in a main location and provide maximum flying and medical facilities to allow 24 hour a day operations.
To facilitate this, it was proposed to retain the steel frame and concrete slab of the existing hangar at Norwich Airport. Re-cladding and re-modelling the building with a new large mezzanine level, adding a large 2 storey new build extension to provide the required accommodation and implementing a fabric first, passive approach through the use of thermal modelling in order to reduce the energy consumption of the overall building. Thermal comfort and wellbeing of the occupants is further enhanced with the use of hybrid ventilation systems and air quality and temperature monitoring systems which maximise the thermal weight of the building to provide optimal fresh air to the staff as well as maintaining the necessary thermal comfort requirements in all seasons.
The resulting building is visually impressive both externally and internally with vibrant colours and exposed services, providing an inspiring place to work for the wide range of East Anglian Air Ambulance Staff through provision of a high quality internal environment that doesn’t rely on mechanical cooling or PV to achieve the low CO2 emissions.
The judges were particularly impressed with the considered implementation of passive design techniques complemented by the rigorous seasonal commissioning of building systems to ensure exceptional comfort and optimised energy use, all year round.
The building was completed in 2021 and the Final Certificate issued in April 2022 achieving an ‘A’ rated EPC without the use of PV arrays, to improve and reduce the CO2 emissions.
2019 Winner
The winner of the 2019 CIBSE East Anglia Engineering Excellence Award is Aiden Sheeran of Concertus Design and Property Consultants, for a new 210 place, purpose-built primary school for Suffolk County Council, located in the village of Red Lodge.
The judges’ commented: “The work carried out by Aiden resulted in an energy efficient building which balances the use of natural daylight and hybrid ventilation systems, to ensure occupant comfort.
“Due to the impact of Grenfell, late changes to the design had to be made to incorporate a re-working of the thermal model for a change in wall and floor insulation layers. Despite this, the programme was achieved, and the Client was able to occupy the building on the original date given.”
“The design achieved a reduced emissions rate and an EPC rating of 19, falling within Band A. Early indications are that the building is exceeding its estimated energy performance.”