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Retrofitting heritage office buildings in the UK: a case study

Olubukola Tokede (School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia)
Nilupa Udawatta (School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia)
Mark Luther (School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia)

Built Environment Project and Asset Management

ISSN: 2044-124X

Article publication date: 5 February 2018

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Abstract

Purpose

Heritage buildings are a crucial part of the UK built sector. They perpetuate a sense of identity, prestige and community. Many heritage buildings however tend to be energy inefficient and the scope for retrofitting such buildings is paramount. Heritage buildings require ratification from planning bodies in order to undertake any alteration on the building. This tends to create a bottleneck in the retrofitting of heritage office buildings. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

This study utilises a case study building in Scotland to evaluate the potential for retrofitting in a UK heritage office building. Building energy simulation software is used to generate the energy data in different retrofit options. A scenario analysis on the heritage status of the building is also undertaken.

Findings

The costs, energy consumption and carbon emission levels are evaluated and compared. It was found that the differential in annual energy savings achieved, based on the proportion of capital cost to operational cost, is 14.6 per cent in the heritage building, compared to 24.6 per cent in the non-heritage building.

Originality/value

The study suggests that government and other stakeholders should seek for ways of incentivising retrofit investments in heritage buildings. This will provide an effective way of minimising the contributions of the built environment to global warming and climate change.

Keywords

Citation

Tokede, O., Udawatta, N. and Luther, M. (2018), "Retrofitting heritage office buildings in the UK: a case study", Built Environment Project and Asset Management, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 39-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/BEPAM-11-2016-0068

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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