Arup is a global firm of designers, engineers, planners and business consultants, providing a range of services for all aspects of the built environment, having undertaken projects in more than 160 countries. Chris Jofeh is a Director of Arup and also leads the company's Existing Buildings' consultancy, which includes an 'Existing Buildings - Survival Strategies' guide. The guide advises on the various challenges faced and addresses the many benefits - environmental and financial - of improving existing structures.

What is Arup's overall ethos towards sustainable construction and design?

I think it's actually the ethos that Ove Arup set down when he founded the firm. It sounds a bit pretentious to say that, but the more you learn about him, the more you realises how far-sighted he was. In the early days, he talked about the kind of architecture which later became known as holistic design, and these days we call it sustainable design. The essence of it is that you take account of all the things that need to be taken account of when designing, not just be hostage to few special interests or dominant voices.

That was true then and I think it's doubly true now. If you look back to the green building movement of the 1970s, I think one of reasons that it didn't succeed was not that the designs weren't good, as well as being green, but that this was the only focus, and that factors like the financial side of things weren't considered nearly as much as they should have been.

Who is the 'Existing Buildings - Survival Strategies' guide aimed at?

It's targeted at people and organisations who own buildings, with an emphasis on those who own or occupy large portfolios of buildings, and it has two complementary aims. The first is to refocus what we mean by sustainable design. It has, in the last ten years, been used by the design profession to mean 'green', and that's still an important component, but I think these days - and in the current financial turmoil in which we find ourselves - the emphasis needs to be on business survival. So the thrust is: how can buildings better serve the interests of the businesses or organisations that own them?

The parallel stream is that we need to do this in a way that's actually good for society and good for the environment. But we're not banging the 'save the planet' drum, because experience has shown that can actually be fairly counter-productive, because most people respond to that by saying: "Yes, but what can I do, as just one individual?" So the focus is to see how we can make buildings work better to help businesses or organisations in a series of ways that are actually socially and environmentally beneficial.

Why is energy-efficient refurbishment of existing buildings such a crucial issue?

Existing buildings in the UK are responsible for something between 40-50% of our CO2 emissions, and the UK government has set an ambitious target of an 80% reduction of these emissions by 2050, through the climate change act of 2008. This is a big target, so retrofitting is necessary from a legislative compliance point of view, it's necessary from a climate point of view and as it's saving the business some money, it's also necessary from a business point of view as well.

At the moment, energy is still cheap and it's not a major component of the expenditure on most buildings, but that will change as we come out of recession - demand will outstrip supply and then costs will rise to cause those two to balance, and one can look forward a couple of years and oil will be back at $150 a barrel. So energy will become more important, but even if you can only save a little bit it's certainly worth doing, and there are plenty of instances where people have actually been able to save a lot.

What kinds of technologies are becoming increasingly common features of commercial/non-domestic retrofitting?

There are lots of technologies coming along and being implemented - you're seeing a lot of solar panels and ground source heat pumps - but I think the approach which is slowly gaining strength is actually that of not changing the technology, but just running it more intelligently.

There's a lot of evidence out there that you can drive down the energy costs of buildings quite a lot through some very simple interventions in how you maintain your equipment, how you run the building and how the people inside the building behave. So I think it's not so much a question of new technologies coming along, as it is new attitudes to making the current technologies work better.

Can you tell me about some of Arup's projects which have utilised sustainable construction and/or energy-efficient design?

There's a big list. There are buildings like the CIS building in Manchester, which we retrofitted about ten years ago. There are new-build projects like BedZed, which is designed to be as close as possible to zero carbon in its operations. There are an awful lot of low-energy buildings around. We've completed approximately two developments at level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes.

On a larger scale, we're starting to masterplan and design whole cities or sections of cities to be as close to zero carbon as possible. There are a wide range of projects all over the place, such as the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

The projects I've just mentioned are some of the high-profile examples - if you look under the surface, you'll find that at numerous offices, for example, people are just quietly getting on with things and doing all sorts of very interesting low energy work. This is just what we do, so it doesn't always get a lot of publicity - it's just normal these days.

What other benefits can be gained from retrofitting, apart from improving the energy performance of a building?

You start with the fact that you've saved some energy and therefore you've reduced your bills. If yours is a building which has a Display Energy Certificate [DEC], then you can achieve a better rating in the building as well. You've reduced the carbon footprint, so there are certainly environmental benefits.

For a specific example, there is evidence that for some students, choosing a university (particularly at newer universities) is influenced by looking at the environmental performance of the campus. So as the funding of universities is dependant on the number of students they get, it's a fairly virtuous circle to drive down your energy bills and behave environmentally better, thereby also attracting more business.

Another factor is the Energy Performance Certificate [EPC] of a building. If you can actually upgrade your building so that it gets a better EPC, there is growing evidence from the marketplace to suggest that it will actually improve the value of the building, which is no bad thing these days, when the ratio of loan-to-value is getting dangerously high and some organisations may be in danger of breaking their banking covenants. This way, you can probably charge more rent for a building that is more energy-efficient and you'll probably get a better market value with an improved EPC.

Other benefits include the idea that you probably improve your resilience in some way - though that's a slightly harder argument to deploy - but if you can reduce your dependency on external sources of energy, then you're just in a sounder state altogether. It looks good on your CSR [Corporate and Social Responsibility] report, and brand reputation and other areas are helped as well, because customers are starting to make choices influenced by the behaviour of companies in areas like environmental performance. There really are a wide range of benefits - there are some hard measures like money and CO2, and there are a whole series of softer reputational issues as well.

Should the benefits of retrofitting be marketed harder than at present?

Actually, organisations like The Carbon Trust are doing a pretty good job in getting that message across - and on a domestic scale, The Energy Savings Trust as well - but I think one can always do more.

The message does need to be pushed home harder, because the UK as whole hasn't yet succeeded in driving down its carbon emissions. But as to whether it's simply more exultation or whether we need a different approach - I think probably the latter is the case. We commissioned some research last year from a group of psychologists at Leeds University Business School, into green behaviours in buildings and what you need to do to change those behaviours. They were very clear that it's not just a technical problem, it's a socio-technical problem, and that there is a whole raft of measures - there's no single measure that will do it on its own. We need to look at feedback, we need to look at reward, we need to look at competition, we need to look at the world of leadership - all sorts of things need to be done. But the psychologists were very clear - you don't change behaviours by changing attitudes. It actually works the other way. You have to make it possible and desirable for people to change their behaviours and then the attitudes will follow.

How important are EPCs (Energy Performance Certificates), CRCs (Carbon Reduction Commitments) and other legislative considerations when undertaking retrofitting?

I think there's been a slow start, but there is now market evidence to suggest that they are beginning to have an effect. We conducted a survey of property clients in the south east and they indicated very clearly that a poorly rated building in terms of its EPC would command less rent than an equal building with a better EPC rating. Then we asked them to look at 2015 and what they thought the situation would be then, and the majority of the respondents said that they thought there would be a notable marking-down of a poorly rated building in terms of the rent you might get from it.

CRCs are coming into effect soon and for organisations which have a large portfolio of buildings - and there are quite a few of them around the country - this is going to hit home too, so I think those two bits of legislation are going to be quite effective together. Also, in Europe the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive part two is being drafted, which will allow all the loopholes in part one to be closed, and we'll see year-on-year fiercer and fiercer legislation relating to the energy performance of buildings, which will make it even more desirable for people to reduce their energy bills.

Is the 'Existing Buildings - Survival Strategies' guide a means of addressing some of these legislative concerns?

It outlines a logical process for doing so. Not just driving down energy, but improving the performance of the building in other ways as well, which might be the productivity or wellbeing of the staff, or retention of employees or tenants. However, by itself the guide isn't like a car manual where you can turn to the right page and fix the right thing - you need to have the right engineer and cost consultant alongside you, and to understand the processes to make it work. Overall though, I think that the process we've laid out is a pretty simple, straightforward and rational one that works.

What advice would you give to organisations wishing to undertake refurbishment of existing buildings?

The first thing that someone should do is to think about the needs of their business, whether it's land value, building value, cashflow, image, productivity, shareholder value - whatever it is, think about those first of all and then think about setting some targets for the building, which might be in terms of the building condition and its performance or customer experience of the building or energy consumption or legislative compliance.

Whatever the need, start with a business focus on how you want your building to better serve your business. Come and talk to us, obviously! One of the early things we would do is to audit the building in terms of its condition and its performance so that it can be benchmarked against comparable buildings, and from those two things - condition and performance of the building on one side, and the business targets for the building on the other - you can then put together a sensible programme of interventions that deliver the results the client needs.

Do you think that the current financial climate will help or hinder energy-efficient refurbishment and people's attitudes towards it?

I think it will hinder those refurbishments which involve significant capital cost, but it should help those that don't involve significant cost, and the good news is that there are an awful lot of things which one could call 'quick wins' but which don't cost a great deal. In fact some of them are free - which makes a difference - and if you can devise for yourself a programme of activities where you start with the quick wins, whereby you're making some savings, and then invest those savings to enable you to do a little bit more and then a little bit more, you can then be well-positioned to come out of the recession in better shape than you went into it.

For more information about Arup's 'Existing Buildings - Survival Strategies' guide, visit: http://www.arup.com/europe/feature.cfm?pageid=12146

Alternatively, visit: http://www.arup.com/

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