Periodic Reporting for period 3 - QUANTUM (Quality management for building performance - improving energy performance by life cycle quality management)
Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2019-12-31
Buildings are the world’s largest CO2-producers. The rise of technical building systems and sophisticated building automation systems opens new possibilities to improve building performance, to reduce emissions and enhance indoor environmental qualities.
At the same time, the increasing complexity of these systems overstrains engineers, contractors and facilities managers. These factors result in significant performance gaps between intended operation and real operation, estimated to be as much as 25% in additional energy consumption. Due to this severe lack of quality, society is wasting a tremendous potential to fight climate change and improve the space in which we spend 95% of our lives, the indoor environment. This deviation is not a technological deficit – something we do not have the means for, but a lack of quality. Hence, improvements in quality management are urgently needed.
The objective of the QUANTUM project is therefore to develop and demonstrate pragmatic services and appropriate tools supporting quality management in the design, construction, commissioning and operation phase as a means to close this gap in European buildings. The project integrates different innovative ICT-driven tools supporting the quality management process into building and energy services:
• The Performance Test Bench by synavision/ Germany can be used to specify and test functions of building services;
• HPS/NG9 by Energy Team SpA/Italy can be used to cost-effectively meter a variety of physical parameters in buildings;
• The Comfortmeter by Factor4/Belgium is a web tool to evaluate the perceived indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in office buildings (www.comfortmeter.eu)
Within QUANTUM, partners have developed the tools close to market readiness and have applied them on a representative set of buildings. The demonstrators included different building types in several European countries. Furthermore, the tools have been applied within different services like engineering, performance contracting or re-commissioning.
At the same time, the increasing complexity of these systems overstrains engineers, contractors and facilities managers. These factors result in significant performance gaps between intended operation and real operation, estimated to be as much as 25% in additional energy consumption. Due to this severe lack of quality, society is wasting a tremendous potential to fight climate change and improve the space in which we spend 95% of our lives, the indoor environment. This deviation is not a technological deficit – something we do not have the means for, but a lack of quality. Hence, improvements in quality management are urgently needed.
The objective of the QUANTUM project is therefore to develop and demonstrate pragmatic services and appropriate tools supporting quality management in the design, construction, commissioning and operation phase as a means to close this gap in European buildings. The project integrates different innovative ICT-driven tools supporting the quality management process into building and energy services:
• The Performance Test Bench by synavision/ Germany can be used to specify and test functions of building services;
• HPS/NG9 by Energy Team SpA/Italy can be used to cost-effectively meter a variety of physical parameters in buildings;
• The Comfortmeter by Factor4/Belgium is a web tool to evaluate the perceived indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in office buildings (www.comfortmeter.eu)
Within QUANTUM, partners have developed the tools close to market readiness and have applied them on a representative set of buildings. The demonstrators included different building types in several European countries. Furthermore, the tools have been applied within different services like engineering, performance contracting or re-commissioning.
Following the tool development and initial testing in three buildings (M1-18), the tools have been improved based on the partner`s feedback. Partners then started to implement the tools in 15 buildings in demo phase 2 testing the technical feasibility and application ergonomics.
A wide range of services has been analysed to integrate the tools into their scope. Demo phase 2 allowed the application especially for existing buildings and in some cases for the late commissioning phase. Within QUANTUM, they have been integrated into services like “Independent Third-Party Testing” and “Energy Performance Contracting”.
Detailed success indicators and data collection methodologies have been developed building upon results from the European project Re-Co (https://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/projects/en/ projects/re-co). Results can be reviewed online at https://www.quantum-project.eu/buildings/.
Based on the tool application and service experiences, business models have been developed by the partners and in cooperation with external stakeholders. In cooperation with synavision and REHVA, the French company COPILOT (formerly ABCE CxC company), Paris (https://copilot-building.com) has developed a comprehensive certification scheme for Commissioning and for Technical Monitoring for which synavision`s performance test bench is being used.
Both services, Commissioning and for Technical Monitoring, are explained in detail in the REHVA Guidebook 29 “Quality Management for Buildings”. A huge success beyond the initial work plan of QUANTUM is the development of the AMEV Guideline 135 “Technisches Monitoring” in Germany. AMEV provides working documents for all public building administrations in Germany. The guideline defines a specific third-party testing service for building performance. Its development has been supported by QUANTUM.
A wide range of services has been analysed to integrate the tools into their scope. Demo phase 2 allowed the application especially for existing buildings and in some cases for the late commissioning phase. Within QUANTUM, they have been integrated into services like “Independent Third-Party Testing” and “Energy Performance Contracting”.
Detailed success indicators and data collection methodologies have been developed building upon results from the European project Re-Co (https://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/projects/en/ projects/re-co). Results can be reviewed online at https://www.quantum-project.eu/buildings/.
Based on the tool application and service experiences, business models have been developed by the partners and in cooperation with external stakeholders. In cooperation with synavision and REHVA, the French company COPILOT (formerly ABCE CxC company), Paris (https://copilot-building.com) has developed a comprehensive certification scheme for Commissioning and for Technical Monitoring for which synavision`s performance test bench is being used.
Both services, Commissioning and for Technical Monitoring, are explained in detail in the REHVA Guidebook 29 “Quality Management for Buildings”. A huge success beyond the initial work plan of QUANTUM is the development of the AMEV Guideline 135 “Technisches Monitoring” in Germany. AMEV provides working documents for all public building administrations in Germany. The guideline defines a specific third-party testing service for building performance. Its development has been supported by QUANTUM.
QUANTUM has been very successful in carrying out its work plan and has even gone significantly beyond it. Three highly scalable ICT tools are now available in Europe to improve energy efficiency and indoor environmental qualities of buildings with truly innovative features:
• The Performance Test Bench by synavision GmbH/Germany is the first software-as-a-service to specify and test functionalities of building services ready to be applied in completely digital services.
• HPS/NG9 by Energy Team SpA/Italy allows for multiple easy to install and cost-effective metering and corresponding web services.
• Comfortmeter by Factor 4/Belgium is the first web service to reliably measure and evaluate indoor environmental qualities in physical and monetary terms.
The companies have estimated the potential impact of their tools. Current developments seem to support their potential:
• synavision estimates the addressable market in Germany for the Performance Test Bench to be about b€ 1 for new construction and existing buildings. Abatement cost for CO2 have been calculated to be at about 0.1 €/(kWh*a). Demo cases in QUANTUM and other applications indicate customer ROIs of less than 1 year.
• Energy Team SpA estimates that the abatement cost of HPS/NG9 is on average 50% per point of measure and the installation cost is reduced up to 80% compared with traditional current transformer meters. The Italian market is facing during 2018-2019 period the second period application of art. 8 of EED Energy Efficiency Directive. More than 20’000 large and energy intensive companies are obliged to perform energy audits up to the end of 2019. Thus, a rising request of energy monitoring systems is coming from the market. The expected increase of energy efficiency in the building sector is estimated to be 5-10%.
• (Factor4) Comfortmeter is a tool that – in the first place – maps the level of indoor comfort as experienced by building occupants. When it comes to calculating the ‘employee productivity improvement potential’, based on the outcome of a Comfortmeter survey, two approaches may be adopted:
• One option is to assume an overall comfort improvement which is deemed feasible in real life conditions. This figure would be in a range from 2 to 4%. The corresponding productivity increase would then be on average 0.38 to 0.76%. Based on figures for a typical West-European office environment, this would imply a workforce performance increase of 10.4 – 20.8 €/m2
• A theoretical maximum total productivity improvement which amounts on average to 185.70 €/m2. It is the sum of all individual potentials when each comfort aspect would be upgraded to its best-case scenario. This approach is deemed over-optimistic, since not all comfort aspects can be increased to their best-case level and some comfort aspects may require high investments to reach to these levels.
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Furthermore, a typical Comfortmeter survey also reveals certain energy saving potentials in the HVAC and lighting system in a building. Factor4 estimates the total market of Comfort surveys in the European Union to be 3 000 surveys each year.
All three tool partners receive very positive feedback from the market and have been able to generate first business success beyond the QUANTUM project.
• The Performance Test Bench by synavision GmbH/Germany is the first software-as-a-service to specify and test functionalities of building services ready to be applied in completely digital services.
• HPS/NG9 by Energy Team SpA/Italy allows for multiple easy to install and cost-effective metering and corresponding web services.
• Comfortmeter by Factor 4/Belgium is the first web service to reliably measure and evaluate indoor environmental qualities in physical and monetary terms.
The companies have estimated the potential impact of their tools. Current developments seem to support their potential:
• synavision estimates the addressable market in Germany for the Performance Test Bench to be about b€ 1 for new construction and existing buildings. Abatement cost for CO2 have been calculated to be at about 0.1 €/(kWh*a). Demo cases in QUANTUM and other applications indicate customer ROIs of less than 1 year.
• Energy Team SpA estimates that the abatement cost of HPS/NG9 is on average 50% per point of measure and the installation cost is reduced up to 80% compared with traditional current transformer meters. The Italian market is facing during 2018-2019 period the second period application of art. 8 of EED Energy Efficiency Directive. More than 20’000 large and energy intensive companies are obliged to perform energy audits up to the end of 2019. Thus, a rising request of energy monitoring systems is coming from the market. The expected increase of energy efficiency in the building sector is estimated to be 5-10%.
• (Factor4) Comfortmeter is a tool that – in the first place – maps the level of indoor comfort as experienced by building occupants. When it comes to calculating the ‘employee productivity improvement potential’, based on the outcome of a Comfortmeter survey, two approaches may be adopted:
• One option is to assume an overall comfort improvement which is deemed feasible in real life conditions. This figure would be in a range from 2 to 4%. The corresponding productivity increase would then be on average 0.38 to 0.76%. Based on figures for a typical West-European office environment, this would imply a workforce performance increase of 10.4 – 20.8 €/m2
• A theoretical maximum total productivity improvement which amounts on average to 185.70 €/m2. It is the sum of all individual potentials when each comfort aspect would be upgraded to its best-case scenario. This approach is deemed over-optimistic, since not all comfort aspects can be increased to their best-case level and some comfort aspects may require high investments to reach to these levels.
.
Furthermore, a typical Comfortmeter survey also reveals certain energy saving potentials in the HVAC and lighting system in a building. Factor4 estimates the total market of Comfort surveys in the European Union to be 3 000 surveys each year.
All three tool partners receive very positive feedback from the market and have been able to generate first business success beyond the QUANTUM project.