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Don't bury your head in the sand

07/06/2010

It has come to our attention that one of our peers, Paul Jervis BPF, has accused us among others of unnecessarily worrying the industry about the up and coming changes to Building Regulations in the 'Journey to C' series of workshops we organised. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, and we knew when we started that the workshops wouldn't be for everyone but to be criticised by someone that didn't even attend one of our seminars, Paul's inaccurate comments simply don't hold water. The seminars were indeed held before the regulations were finalised but if we'd left it any later, the industry would have had even less time to prepare. We don't want to scare monger but equally our industry is facing a huge challenge and the solution isn't to bury our heads in the sand and pretend we don't have that much to do.

Paul claimed that we told companies they would have to have a Window Energy Rating to comply with the revised Building Regulations. The first thing to point out is that we have always been clear about the fact that the proposed Building Regulations were exactly that - proposed! Also, if Paul had attended one of our workshops, he would know that Edgetech representatives and Giles Willson from the British Fenestration Ratings Council both discussed the possible changes to legislation including WERs and a lower u-value in their papers. In interviews in the trade press we also drew attention to the fact that we were holding the seminars before the proposals were finalised because to start the seminars late in April when the changes were announced would have left the industry even less time to prepare.

In our opinion while over 600 people attended our seminars, the industry as a whole still isn't doing enough to meet the challenges ahead. That is why Edgetech will continue a version of its 'Journey to C' initiative to help companies comply whatever the method. Having said that we would still argue there are far more benefits to be enjoyed by window companies selling to the retail sector who opt for the WER route over and above achieving compliance with u-values, which is more suitable for architects who are concerned with the overall energy performance of a building.