The winners of this year’s CIBSE Building Performance Awards highlight the excellent work being carried out by CIBSE and its members in helping to create a low carbon future.

Cyclone Energy Group won the Project of the Year – Retail/Leisure, for its work with McDonald’s Corporation in designing what is believed to be the world’s first net zero quick service restaurant at Walt Disney World, Florida.

The restaurant’s all-electric design has an annual energy consumption goal of 666,000 kWh, while the solar panels installed on the restaurant’s roof produce 705,000 kWh of renewable energy – enabling the quick service restaurant to generate more energy than it consumes over the course of a year.

Michael Lonsdale Group was another winner. The contractor won the Embodied Carbon Award for its pioneering work with suppliers to create a database of low embodied carbon products that enable it to recommend low carbon building services systems to its clients.

Now in its 15th year, the CIBSE Building Performance Awards is the only awards scheme to celebrate the measured performance of projects and products in use while celebrating the engineering consultancies and manufacturers that are contributing to a low carbon future.

Consultant Max Fordham LLP won three awards; work in exploring a carbon neutral design for the new Library and Study Centre at St John’s College, Oxford won both Project of the Year – Public Use and Building Performance Champion of Champions Award.

Buro Happold won the Building Performance Consultancy (over 300 employees). The consultancy impressed the panel with their reporting of key metrics across the range of questions; for example explicitly quantifying the impacts of interventions undertaken to improve equality, diversity and inclusion and to reduce the carbon impacts of their own operations.  The panel was also impressed by the measure detailed to maintain and improve internal and external virtual collaboration during unprecedented pandemic conditions.

Other outstanding initiatives recognised at last night’s event include consultant Hoare Lea for its work with Legal & General Investment Management. It won the Facilities Management category for its initiative in placing a building performance engineer at the heart of every facilities management project to proactively improve the facilities management process in multi-tenanted buildings. The judges described Hoare Lea as “The standout winner with a different approach to an industry-wide problem”.

FairHeat won the Collaboration Award for its work with Origin Housing and Hill Group. The award recognised Fairheat’s approach to the design and delivery of an ultra-low temperature, low carbon heat network to serve 116 new apartments for affordable rent, shared ownership and private sale.

The awards took place at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, London. Other winners included: Buro Happold and XCO2 in the Building Performance Consultancy categories; Signify, Knauf Insulation & Knauf Energy Solutions, and Water Kinetics in the Product or Innovation categories; while Mike Burton of AECOM was Building Performance Engineer of the Year.

Hywel Davies, technical director of organisers for the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, said:

“Pressure is growing to improve the performance of our building stock to make it safer, healthier and more energy efficient.  These awards showcase some of the best examples of projects and products that are helping drive forward improvements in building performance.”