25 September 2005 - Post Event Update
Looking at Your Building, Looking for Sustainability
On 25 August 2005, the Business Environment Council organised a one day seminar to discuss various aspects of HK-BEAM (Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method. External speakers for the event included Professor John Burnett, Dr.T.M. Chung, Dr. W.L. Lee and Professor Daniel Chan, all from the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, and Mr. Rumin Yin from Ove Arup and Partners HK Ltd.) The seminar was attended by nearly 50 delegates from various disciplines in the building industry.
HK-BEAM was introduced to Hong Kong in 1996 and is an environmental performance based assessment scheme purpose designed for local high rise buildings. The latest HK-BEAM standards (Version 4/04 and Version 5/04) covers all "New" and "Existing" building types, including office, residential, mall, hotel, school, hospital, institutional and mixed complexes -centrally air-conditioned, naturally ventilated or mixed mode. The seminar provided an overview of these standards, with emphasis on pertinent issues for which improvements can be made and significant benefits can be realised.
In the morning session, our internal speakers and HK-BEAM assessor (Mr. Peter Chan, Mr. Benny Au and Mr. Charles Chu) and Professor Burnett provided a synopsis of the background, philosophy, approach and development of the assessment scheme and its framework criteria. Assessment criteria of specific interest in terms of innovations and performance enhancements were highlighted with case sharing discussions. The session also introduced the soon to be released "on-line" web-based tool in which building professionals can use HK-BEAM to evaluate the environmental sustainability of their properties.
In the afternoon session, the focus was on the application of advanced predictive design tools to achieve building performance excellence, as recommended under HK-BEAM. Dr. Chung explained the interaction between buildings and sunlight, and the use of software tools to evaluate and maximise solar and daylight availability in the design of high rise premises. Dr. Lee's presentation provided an overview on the application of HK-BEAM's thermal simulation tools to predict and benchmark energy consumption for commercial and residential, and identify design modifications to reduce usage. Professor Chan presented his recent work on analyzing difficulties in achieving Government's Indoor Air Quality Certification Scheme and offered solutions to address air pollutant problems which are most difficult to address. Lastly, the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics technology to predict building performance and identify possible mitigation measures for issues such as microclimate was explained by Mr Yin.
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