Using Simulations To Help The Design Team To Make Well-Grounded Decisions

Santeri Siren of Ramboll was selected as a finalist for the 2018 CIBSE Building Simulation Group Awards and traveled all the way from Finland to present his entry at CIBSE Build 2 Perform 2018.  Santeri discusses his entry below which was awarded Runner Up.  You can see Santeri's presentation here 

Too often energy simulations are used only to make the mandatory building code calculations or to verify the effects of already made design choices. This is truly a waste of potential because energy simulations can be used in making those design choices and to provide real benefit to the project if used correctly.

Our project was all about using simulations to help the design team to make well-grounded decisions and thus create a real impact on the design choices made in a construction project of an apartment building in Helsinki (120 apartments).

I will write about three important steps for effectively using a simulation study in a construction project.

The first step is to plan and run the first simulations at very early stage in the design schedule when the design parameters are not yet locked.

In this project we started to plan our simulation study with other designers before the architect had even released the first version of building floor plans. Thus, we were able to flexibly choose meaningful design options to study with the simulations for example window sizes, glazing types, cooling systems, envelope insulation and AHU options.

The second step is to have enough extensive study to be able to form a comprehensive overall picture and add value to the project. In this case we studied 1840 different combinations i.e. 1840 possible ways to design the same building. For each of these possibilities we calculated the building energy consumption, energy CO₂ emissions, local building code energy rating, building code indoor air requirements, investment costs, lifecycle cost and indoor air quality study for every bedroom and living room.

This way we had enough data to manage many aspects on how different variables affect the project. E.g. if you change the window sizes you can see how it effects the energy consumption, indoor air temperatures, required cooling system and what is the influence on the cost etc. There were many interesting cause and effect relations to be found.

The whole point is in managing the overall picture and understanding how one change will affect multiple areas of the project and building performance.

The final step is to present all this information to other parties in an approachable way. This is extremely important because without an efficient way to present and manage the results all your hard work can go to waste. Luckily there are good software’s in the market that can be used to do this. We created interactive visualizations of the data that are easy to use for non-technical people also.

Results were studied by the design team in several meetings and were used to make well-grounded decisions and steer the design choices to optimal direction

Written by Santeri Siren, Posted by Darren Coppins - CIBSE Building Simulation Group Vice Chair