Building Performance Analysis and Energy Modeling

In the past, buildings were designed with functionality or profitability as the prime objectives. Driven by the increasing concerns on energy security and climate change, more buildings are required to be designed with environmentally sustainable performance goals. 

The actual energy performance or carbon footprint of a building is determined by the complex interaction of many factors, such as building orientation, geometry, local environment, facade design, architecture layout, usage of rooms, human factors and choice of equipment. It becomes more challenging to adopt the traditional prescriptive process of building design to meet stringent performance goals, such as those stipulated by BCA Green Mark Gold+ and Platinum standards. 

Building performance analysis becomes an essential and effective tool to help building architects and engineers assess how the building design will affect the total building performance. Building Energy modeling allows the performance of a pre-built building design be evaluated and compared to a benchmark to finally assess the potential energy savings that could be achieved.

Designers are beginning to realize that in order to meet the energy performance goals, an integrated approach to building design is essential. Building Energy modeling assists designers to evaluate at an early stage, how design decisions will impact the overall building performance. It allows designers to make trade offs or interplay design options in order to meet the performance goals and yet within the project budget or timeline.

We have built our Building Energy Modeling capabilities upon the IES VE platform, allowing us to integrate with designs built upon Revit, Sketchup and gbXML platforms.