Being normal — an engineering perspective
At the start of his year in office, CIBSE’s new president presents his concerns and visions to members. David Fisk is concerned about the consequences of departing from ‘normal’ engineering.
CIBSE’s new president David Fisk is concerned that ‘spin’ is prevailing over sound engineering — to the detriment of the UK economy, reducing carbon emissions and helping to achieve sustainability. He gave vent to his concerns in his presidential address.
Let’s start with some of the problems that are the result of departing from the straight and narrow of being normal.
One is the UK’s economic situation, still a long way from full recovery. David Fisk said, ‘I am haunted by the list of countries now outperforming the UK economy. It is not that they are doing what we do, only better. Most are doing something different — being normal.
‘The Office for Budget Responsibility now tells us that we had deluded ourselves into thinking that we were the “fastest-growing economy” in the OECD. When we thought we were, every eccentricity was argued as the recipe for our success, not the precursor of our downfall.
‘Now the myth is bust, it ought to be the time to rethink fundamentals. As they are saying in France, it is time to be “normal”.’
And a return to being normal is what David Fisk wants to see for engineering — as he told his audience with his characteristic sense of humour while making serious points.
But there is another need, and that is for engineering institutions to comprehend that good engineering requires tight language, not diffuse ideas. David Fisk’s view is that without that comprehension, we are in trouble. He is concerned that engineering terms are being used so loosely that people don’t know what they mean.
One of his biggest concerns is what he dubs the mother of all verbal nonsense, ‘sustainability’, and the misplaced effort being put in to achieve it.
He referred to the Brundtland Report written 25 years ago. That is the book with the well known and often cited definition: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’
David Fisk says of that report: ‘It is a full length readable paperback. It reviews all the major issues of the day without fear or favour. Some are depressingly familiar. like biodiversity loss. Others like population, megacities and arms control have since mysteriously disappeared from the discourse.’
All that remains in the UK, he suggested, is an obesity strategy and cycle pathways!
David Fisk’s concern is that ‘the epic scope of Brundtland has shrunk to virtually nothing’. He wonders about the meaning of ‘environmental sustainability’ as peddled by the wordsmiths of provocative planning applications, suggesting that if we were normal we would just have had an environment policy. What is the difference?’ he asks.
Next on his agenda was climate change and ‘the particularly British eccentricity of making it all so unbelievably complicated’. David Fisk’s suggestion is that the normal engineering position might have simply been ‘save energy and save the planet’.
His next question was to wonder if asking CIBSE members to do what they were already getting the hang of would have still seen us being where we are today — or even further on. That route would have involved reducing energy consumption, with some renewables thrown in for energy security — rather than spending so much time worrying about 2050, a date beyond reasonable forecasting. ‘Normal engineering,’ he suggested, ‘would have got better effects with less fuss, less noise and less complications.’
The basis of the knowledge needed already exists from the work of pioneers in building science that codified operational issues of buildings in a what that was sharp and directed and also in a way that normal engineering could address. That thinking forms the basis of the CIBSE Guides and is also the foundation of the great engineering successes of the last two decades.
David Fisk said, ‘It is taken for granted that they [buildings] will not be cold and draughty or dark. It is the lot of the services engineering that when the job is done really well, by definition, no-one notices what we have done. Perhaps that is what makes us so humble!’
That knowledge is also the central foundation of CIBSE’s Knowledge Portal, opened to members during the term of the last CIBSE president Andy Ford. And that Knowledge Portal is where David Fisk suggests that ‘we launch our fight back on behalf of normal engineering’.
The Knowledge Portal has already had some 40 000 visits. ‘This, I contend, is the significance of normal engineering. In a time of mega info, nano knowhow and zero wisdom, a knowledge system is at a premium. The portal is not quite there yet, but if we have to iron out every wrinkle, we would be too late for its task.’
He appealed for help in building up the portal. ‘We need all the members’ help we can get. If you hear a media studies graduate say that fuel cells run off water, send us your piece on fuel cells in services. If you hear someone talking about energy harvesting of body heat, send us a piece on low-temperature heat recovery.’
David Fisk’s final theme was outcomes — how well buildings actually perform and learning from experience of completed and operational buildings.
He highlighted benchmarking as the proven way to reduce the energy use of buildings and the basis for a ‘brilliant’ benchmarking system (in England and Wales) that is Display Energy Certificates in public buildings.
Admitting to letting off steam, he concluded: ‘Personally it has been very frustrating for someone who began life monitoring buildings to see the prostitution of fact in the interests of spreading confusion. I hope individual members will feel free to mount their own protests — whether to planning authorities, advertisers or, even, Government press offices, because normal engineering cannot survive without its grass-roots advocates. Nor can we survive in this tough new world without normal engineering.’
And his vision for CIBSE: ‘CIBSE is in one sense a small player, but in an area under much pressure. At the same time, what we do affects something like a third of the energy costs of the economy. We are about better building performance in the most rounded sense. We need to make that clear in how we present ourselves in the role we play.’
