Discussion

In my experience I found that planning conditions, funding opportunities and BREEAM targets are the main driving incentives for the principal contractor to achieve higher targets. Quite often principal contractor would hire an MEP services provider to achieve efficiency targets, if they do not have in-house MEP capabilities. It is generally easier and cheaper to achieve efficiency measures with services than using high performance fabric materials because of economic reasons. This is also dependent upon the project footprint. Services Consultants generally fix fabric targets during RIBA C/D design stage and freeze architectural and structural efficiency targets with the project Architects at this stage. In my experience I found that this works well except for the air tightness targets.