Six weeks at CIBSE

Six weeks ago, I swapped my usual drive to Mitsubishi Electric’s Hatfield office for a morning train journey into CIBSE’s headquarters in Saffron Hill. 

A new commute, a new team and a plethora of new insights, here’s what I learnt working as a Government Affairs & Policy Officer at CIBSE.

So, just who are CIBSE and why are they so important?

Well, if you’re not directly connected to the construction industry, you may not know that The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) equips professionals with the knowledge, expertise and technical framework to improve building performance, ensure occupant safety and decarbonise the built environment. 

Vital work

Through developing Technical Memorandums and establishing minimum competence benchmarks, CIBSE enables building service engineers to navigate complex regulatory standards and technical barriers to design safe, efficient buildings fit for the future. 

At a time where the industry is eager to push beyond 'mandatory' requirements, CIBSE sets a clear pathway for organisations and professionals to integrate advanced sustainable building practices to achieve their ambitious sustainability goals. 

CIBSE’s comprehensive guidelines on best practice for heat pump installations play a key role in accelerating decarbonisation and increasing trust in renewable technologies by ensuring high-quality implementation of heat pump systems. 

CIBSE’s approach to increasing heat pump deployment is rooted in a ‘whole-system thinking’, meaning that electrical capacity, peak demand, integration with wider building services and other such factors must be addressed to maximise heat pump efficiency.  

An influential network 

CIBSE’s membership body, with over 24,000 members extending across 90 countries, acts as a global network for professional support and expertise within the construction and building services industry. 

A comprehensive range of tailored support services are available to CIBSE members at any stage of their career, including apprentices, students and recent graduates. 

For professionals wishing to advance their engineering expertise and demonstrate high technical competence, CIBSE facilitates the process of professional registration, which grants members international recognition of their professional qualifications. 

What are building services:

According to studies, the average adult in the UK spends approximately 90% of their time indoors – this encompasses time spent in our homes, working in offices and indoor leisure activities. 

In spite of the significant proportion of our lives spent in enclosed buildings, many of us are unfamiliar with what ‘buildings services’ entail, and therefore also overlook the critical role it plays in our well-being. 

Building service engineering is what brings a building to life; it provides the heating, cooling, lighting, plumbing and power systems which ensure our comfort and safety. 
 
 
 

Policy and Advocacy

CIBSE acts as a bridge between government and industry, ensuring that professionals have the right policy and technical frameworks in place to deliver a healthier, more sustainable built environment. 

A key driver to achieving this is through mass-deployment of renewable technologies such as heat pumps, which offer high energy efficiency and consistent thermal comfort. 

Moreover, given that heating accounts for a third of carbon emissions in the UK, the decarbonisation of heat will be essential in achieving net zero by 2050. CIBSE has long recognised the central role of heat pumps in this transition, which is why they have produced a wealth of resources and technical guidance to accelerate high-quality heat pump installations. 

The prioritisation of occupant safety, comfort, health and wellbeing in the design of buildings underpins most of CIBSE’s advocacy, which is why overheating and air quality are both priority areas for informing policy. 

Ensuring all buildings have adequate ventilation systems in place is vital to our collective well-being, especially after establishing the fact that the average person spends 22 hours a day (8,395 hours a year!) in enclosed buildings. 

This is why CIBSE has been trying to get a comprehensive regulatory framework on indoor air quality and overheating embedded into national regulations through updating Approved Document F (ventilation) and Approved Document O (overheating). 

CIBSE is also heavily involved in cross-industry advocacy work to make sure there is a unified, cohesive voice for building services in the UK so that its priorities are reflected in major policy discussions. 

Examples of cross-industry groups include the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC), which is led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Construction Industry Council (CIC) and Actuate UK, among many others. 

So, what did I get up to?

During my secondment, I had the chance to get involved in a diverse range of tasks and projects, working primarily with CIBSE’s Head of Government Affairs, Sam Baptist, alongside the technical and knowledge teams. 

I carried out detailed research into embodied carbon reporting requirements in the UK and the EU to gain a better understanding of what is driving mandatory vs voluntary reporting in the current market. 

Drawing upon this research, I wrote a short article for the CIBSE Journal on the UK government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s (EAC) recommendation to mandate whole life carbon reporting, and how it risks undermining the efforts of the construction sector and local governments who are already taking measures to tackle embodied carbon in buildings. 

Further work I got involved in includes policy research into international approaches to future climate data in national building codes. CIBSE’s 2025 weather files use the latest climate projections and historical weather data, including UK climate projections for the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s across 28 different zones. 

By providing access to accurate, future-focused climate data and more precise local modelling, CIBSE’s weather files ensure buildings are designed to mitigate overheating both now and in the future. 

CIBSE is actively working with policy makers across the world to adopt these comprehensive weather files into building performance simulation. As part of this, I supported CIBSE’s Environmental Data Scientist by researching international building regulations and seeing whether they address future climate risks.

A rich understanding 

Other responsibilities centered around analysing stakeholder engagement, which included stakeholder mapping and monitoring election campaigns for the upcoming local and devolved elections. 

The Government have repeatedly emphasised the key role local communities play in the Warm Homes initiative and in delivering retrofit at scale, thereby highlighting the value of engaging with local and devolved governments to accelerate decarbonisation in the built environment.

My secondment at CIBSE, despite its short length, has provided me with a much richer understanding of how building services professionals can help us bring a net zero future into fruition. 

Placements, secondments and other such work experience provide an invaluable opportunity in particular for young professionals in the early stages of their careers. 

Cross-industry collaboration will be crucial in reaching our collective goal: delivering a safe, efficient and sustainable built environment for current and future generations.

Wranga Wardak is a Policy and Public Affairs Graduate at Mitsubishi Electric