The quest for sustainable buildings is here to stay — HVCA president
Sooner or later, low- and zero-carbon buildings will become the norm — that was the message from HVCA president Gareth Vaughan to the association’s specialist groups at an event to outline the key challenges facing building-services engineers.
Drawing on his experiences at the annual convention of the Mechanical Contractors’ Association of America, he said, ‘Our American cousins have heard the sustainability clarion call loud and clear — and are responding in a manner and at a speed that has made the USA the great and powerful nation it is today.
‘It is my belief that the ”green fever” that has our US colleagues in its grip is one that is very well worth catching — and that the greater our engagement with sustainability, the better it will be for the nation, the planet, our industry and our businesses.’
He told his audience that in the quest for sustainability across the built environment, technologies that depended, in whole or in part, on renewable energy were being developed and marketed and that many such products already existed.
He stressed that the building-services engineering sector is well placed to be at the forefront of this revolution — but that there are other players from other disciplines who are already developing the skills required to install ‘green’ products.
‘They will not be slow to pick up the ball and run with it, should we let it slip from our grasp,’ he said.
