INNOVATION July-August 2014

sus tainabi l i ty snapshot : integrating APEGBC guidelines into practice

Kerly Acosta, P.Eng. Brian Just, P.Eng.

A key objective of APEGBC’s Sustainability Committee is to encourage more APEGBC members to integrate sustainability into their professional practice. To achieve this, the Sustainability Committee worked with Summit Environmental Consultants to create a communications plan; the plan was developed through member feedback via focus groups and an online survey. One of the main requests echoed in this feedback was that APEGBC provide practical examples of how others implement sustainability in real-world situations. Below is a snapshot, highlighting the successful integration of one of the sustainability guidelines. Integrating APEGBC Sustainability Guidelines – RDH Example RDH, a building science consulting firm with offices throughout the Pacific Northwest, was the recipient of the 2013 APEGBC Sustainability Award for their Deep Energy Retrofit of the Belmont building located in Vancouver, BC. The Belmont now likely has the most energy efficient building enclosure of any highrise in South-Western BC and serves as a model for the renewal of thousands of similar buildings. In its retrofit, RDH implemented three of APEGBC’s Sustainability Guidelines . Refer to the APEGBC Sustainability and Climate Change website at apeg.bc.ca/ sustainability for a complete listing of the guidelines. Guideline 5: Assess Sustainability Performance and Identify Opportunities for Improvement The Belmont project was predicted to result in a 20% reduction in overall building energy and a 90% reduction of in-suite space heating energy. It was

important to measure performance of the building before and after the upgrades to benchmark the progress for owners. Since the Belmont upgrades are hypothetically repeatable in thousands of other buildings across BC and North America, this benchmarking can provide a valuable reference and learning opportunity for future projects of similar nature and scope. The Belmont underwent great scrutiny throughout the upgrade, including whole building air tightness and energy-savings quantification via a measurement and verification (M&V) plan. The M&V plan was de- veloped using International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) guidelines and includes a one-year measurement period, adjustments for routine factors such as weather and non-routine factors such as the new domestic hot water boiler. The M&V plan also relies upon metering through utility meters and sub-meters added in specific locations. For further information about the Belmont, watch the 2013 Sustainability Award video on APEGBC’s website at apeg.bc.ca/sustainability. For additional information on topics referenced within this snapshot, see the following: • Natural Resources Canada Energy Efficiency for Existing Buildings includes useful references on topics such as transformation of the built environment, energy management, retrofitting and financial considerations.

• The Efficiency Valuation Organization website contains a library of documents relating to IPMVP. • The S.A.P.I.EN.S organization’s article includes a number of sustainability metrics and indices.

The APEGBC Sustainability Com- mittee welcomes submissions from members of sustainable projects highlighting the application of the APEGBC Sustainability Guidelines to profile in future issues of Innovation. For more information, or to submit a project for consideration, email sustainability@apeg.bc.ca. Kerly Acosta, P.Eng., MSc, is a faculty member at BCIT in the Environmental Engineering Technology Department. Brian Just, P.Eng., MASc, is the Manager of Engineering at IFD Corporation in Vancouver.

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