Nurture a sustainable competitive advantage with ESRU Consultancy

Innovative building designers address increasingly stringent energy efficiency regulations and sustainability issues by incorporating leading edge technologies, yet have to remain competitive in their industry as they strive to analyse advanced and complex schemes. ESRU Consultancy helps its clients choose a development path that fits their long term objectives for embedding capability and expertise in their organisations.

Do you …

want to develop your capability to incorporate advanced technologies into your designs but lack the tools to understand the complex energy interactions within the building and its environment?

already use modelling tools but find yourself bidding for every job on cost, because your capabilities don’t exceed those of your competitors?

need a competent partner to support your in-house capability on special jobs?

These are situations that ESRU has recognised and is now addressing through the expansion of ESRU Consultancy.

Sustainable use of energy and material resources is gradually finding its way onto everyone’s agenda. Businesses increasingly look beyond conventional approaches to energy efficiency, and justify every decision related to energy use in terms of whole life analysis and environmental impact. In response, engineers and architects strive to assess and prioritise novel technologies, despite a paucity of design guidance and experience based data which lag the uptake of these approaches by several years. Yet knowledge and experience does exist, and advanced analysis tools can be applied that enable more radical proposals to be analysed. For example, linking the use of energy to its generation; reuse and recycling energy through more than one process; generation, storage and distribution of energy to match demand patterns. These are now practical ideas for organisations that want to demonstrate their leadership in addressing sustainability to their customers, employees and the government.

We are …

the Energy Systems Research Unit (ESRU), located within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. A cross-discipline team concerned with new approaches to built environment energy demand reduction and the introduction of sustainable means of energy supply.

The core work of the team is divided between research, education & training and software development and distribution. International research activities cover a wide range of topics from global / local energy systems performance to indoor / outdoor health & comfort. The policy of ESRU is to disseminate these research outcomes to the industry through the provision of consultancy services backed up by our fundamental knowledge and expertise in these areas.

What we can do for you …

ESRU Consultancy provides services in three broad areas:

  1. Business Solutions: for design organisations that outsource simulation support.
  2. We will assist you by carrying out simulation tasks, and providing you with solutions within your time and cost limits. Such projects can range from a few days investigation, to full scale studies of prestige developments, looking at on-site renewable energy supplies, local environmental impact, internal comfort, air quality and lighting ambiance, and more. Our laboratory facilities are available for testing of new materials and products. We can also monitor the field performance of energy systems in use.

  3. Customisation Solutions: for organizations that have an in-house modelling capability.
  4. This level of support adds a valuable layer of expertise to keep your modelling tools focused on meeting your exact needs. Maybe you already use computer modelling for building thermal performance simulation and want to add a computational fluid dynamics component, with a particular user interface. We will tailor a product for you, and provide all necessary training and support to ensure a painless integration of new capabilities within your organisation.

  5. Enterprise Solutions: the most comprehensive service for companies that want to go one stage further.

ESRU Consultancy will implement a complete corporate deployment of state-of-the-art open source applications to create a leading edge in sustainable building design at lower total operational costs. Enterprise Solutions analyses your needs, scales, recommends and configures the best hardware and software system solution, and trains your staff. A telephone help service and on-site support is available. In common with all our services, you can start small, beginning with technology transfer of single software packages. Remember our software is open source; you only pay for training and support.

We are different …

The core tool at ESRU is the ESP-r integrated modelling and simulation package. ESP-r has been selected previously as a European Reference Model for building energy simulation. It's at work in some of the world's largest commercial, government, and academic institutions. For any deployment, ESRU delivers cost effective performance, and the security of our open source policy.

Additionally, we have at our disposal the broadest selection of other modelling and simulation tools. They include the following.

Ventilation simulation: the capability to model ventilation air flows and pollution transmission in buildings.

Lighting simulation: quantitative studies of natural and artificial lighting, 3D modelling, rendering & animation.

Computational Fluid Dynamics: another powerful tool that allows us to model air flow in extraordinary detail. Applications include the following.

Indoor air quality and thermal comfort, including ventilation system layout design, pollution and smoke dispersion.

Outdoor wind effects, including wind pressure loading, environmental impact of air pollution and pedestrian comfort.

Fire & smoke risk assessment, a specialist service for:

investigating ignition and fire spread through a building;

modelling of fire fighting using sprinklers, fire shutters and emergency vents;

assisting crime investigators in retracing a fire to discover its source.

ESRU Consultancy

is tailored to your needs, large or small;

uses world class, open source software so you benefit from leading edge simulation tools on surprisingly cost effective terms;

is backed by access to the original research experience that developed many of the tools in use today;

puts you in the lead as a supplier of sustainable design solutions.

To discuss your requirements, email consultancy@esru.strath.ac.uk or call us on +44 (0)141 548 5765.

Case Study 1: Ventilation study eliminates overheating

A fully glazed conservatory extension was being added to a care home, to be used as a residents’ day room. The client was concerned that openable windows on their own might not prevent overheating. The ventilation air flows were determined using ESP-r’s air flow network modelling capability (see figure). ESRU recommended a higher specification solar control glass to dramatically cut peak solar gain and keep the space temperature within acceptable limits.

Case Study 2: Environmental impact analysis reduces contamination risk

ESRU Consultancy carried out an environmental impact assessment for the risks of contamination emitted from the roof-top stacks on a university building. CFD simulations were carried out for different wind speeds and directions.

Risks of high concentrations of contaminant at certain locations under different wind directions were identified and the influence of wind speeds on the distribution of concentration of contaminant was quantified. The simulation results were used to demonstrate compliance with environmental health regulations.

Please visit our consultancy case studies for further insights.