This Guide provides building services engineers with guidance on how to respond to the changing sustainability agenda. It describes:
how they can influence the work done and decisions made by clients and other professionals.
the actions that building services engineers should take to enable their work to deliver sustainable outcomes.
Beyond Net Zero and the new CIBSE Guide L: Sustainability
CIBSE and AECOM hosted a webinar on Wednesday 23 September where a selected number of expert speakers presented and debated the ambitions of the net zero economy.
Watch now
Engineers have a huge influence over the energy use, carbon dioxide emissions, health and wellbeing, water use and other sustainability outcomes of buildings and the wider projects in which they sit. There is increasing pressure to address these issues and to understand how engineering decisions can deliver a more sustainable built environment.
The set of sustainability issues covered by this guide (set out in chapter 2) balances a concern for comprehensiveness, collaboration and whole system thinking with the need for clarity, the use of familiar terms, and the need to focus on issues where engineers have greatest control and influence.
The principles of sustainability discussed in this document apply wherever in the world engineers practice, and wherever designs or projects are undertaken.
The wider sustainability context is set out in the ‘The age of limits’ (chapter 3). There is necessarily a gap between that chapter, which highlights the challenges ahead and the scale of the societal changes that are needed, and the subsequent guidance chapters, which set out best practice for what practitioners can do now. Where possible, case studies are included from innovators and market leaders which already stretch best practice to progress towards more sustainable buildings and places.
As members of society and as engineers with obligations to society, we also have a duty to use our knowledge to help influence the wider debates and understanding of sustainability. After all, it is only with the full engagement of all of society that the solutions we offer within the built environment can fully deliver on sustainability.
This Guide is intended for all building services engineers.