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Editor’s foreword

Once again we bring you our annual issue of the SDAR Journal. This journal is intended to encourage innovative practice in low-energy design of the built environment, and to encourage applied research among professional practitioners and new researchers in academia. The papers published are intended to inform design practice in construction and to assist innovative engineers striving towards optimisation of building integrated renewable technologies. CIBSE and DIT came together four years ago to jointly publish this journal. The intention then was to disseminate insightful findings to the professional community involved in the built environment, this is still the case.
We assume the reader to be a sceptic who will be convinced by evidence. We are not interested in green bling on buildings or unproven designs. We want instead to encourage post-occupancy evaluation of innovations that support more sustainable and energy-efficient practice leading to mainstreaming of good-quality leading-edge projects. While we want to hear what works well, we are conscious of the fact that the professional community can also be informed by what went wrong. Therefore we encourage critical reflection and objective evaluation of real-world projects. Moving forward we want to publish more papers from our architectural and construction colleagues.
In this issue we feature a paper on Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM is not just the application of software but a paradigm shift in construction projects that demands a new psyche for large contractors who wish to compete internationally for large projects. BIM facilitates collaborative working between all members of the design and construction team. BIM processes accelerate project design times, reduce costs, and are shown to improve the speed and quality of large projects. BIM also improves facilities management and cost control tasks. We would be delighted to receive your abstracts or ideas and can offer support in the writing up of papers. The industry is data rich but sometimes time poor. We encourage and support in practical terms synergies with academia. Academics are eager to support this applied research process and will provide time on task in exchange for access to useful data. A good example of this is the lead paper in this issue, where a working engineer collaborated with academics in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering to produce a paper that will be informative to those involved with stadia design and management throughout the world. We are also keen to publish papers about current issues such as the EPBD Recast paper in this issue. Would-be contributors are encouraged to submit abstracts for the annual SDAR Awards and Irish Lighter competitions. Both competitions are effectively feeders for this journal. We particularly encourage novice researchers and industry professionals to submit short abstracts of their work, either to the above competitions or directly to me. There are two papers in this issue from PhD candidates who are also working engineers, one is on lighting design and the other is about electrochromic glazing.

Dr Kevin T. Kelly

C Eng FCIBSE FSLL FIEI
Head of School of Multidisciplinary Technologies
Dublin Institute of Technology

Article

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Implementation of ISO 50001 Energy Management System in Sports Stadia
Aidan Byrne, Martin Barrett, and Richard Kelly

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Leveraging Lean in construction: A case study of a BIM-based HVAC manufacturing process
Colin j. Conway, Colin Keane, McCarthy McCarthy, Ciara Ahern, and Avril Behan

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Retrofit electrochromic glazing in a UK office
Ruth Kelly Waskett, Birgit Painter, John Mardaljevic, and Katherine Irvine