1. Site issues
These issues emphasize the fact that a building is not an island, and has to be surrounded by a set of urban infrastructures. The following factors need to be addressed (independently of the specific location of the building):
- Telecommunications infrastructure, allowing alternative paths to support data, voice and video communications;
- Local amenities, including availability of shops, retail, hotels, and conference and leisure facilities located in surroundings;
- Access, taking into account distance to main road, metro/railway stations, bus stops, high-ways, and international airport;
- Car parking, on-site and/or supported by nearby parking lots, which should foreseen appropriate figures for visitors and staff;
- Security issues should be considered, either to visitors or personnel;
- Aspect, considering adequate distance with respect to close facades, in order to allow reasonable views and daylight penetration.
2.Shell issues
These issues normally fall under the expertise area of architects and civil engineers. The following factors (among others) are, normally, addressed:
- Thermal balance, where adequate strategies should be considered according to shape and orientation with respect to walls and windows, in order to optimise heat losses and gains during the year;
- Structural grid, avoiding columns inside office open spaces, for instance;
- Planning grid, used to adequately lay out different spaces within the building (for instance, size of offices and enclosed spaces);
- Floor size, which will have a strong impact in terms of internal communication and circulation paths;
- Floor shape; in cases where an irregular shape is used (giving to the building a specific “individuality”), some penalties have to paid, as the flexibility of rearranging layouts will be reduced; even, some areas could be hardly used; from the point of view of layout flexibility, a rectangular shape proved to be the best solution;
- Floor depth, which will constrain a variety of factors, namely the possibility of natural lighting and ventilation;
- Imposed floor loading, where high density storage areas and special equipment should be considered;
- Communications infrastructure should be planned considering specific communication rooms and allowing adequate maximum length of cable runs from the different locations to these communication rooms;
- Staff, visitor and goods entrances should be clearly visible and with easy accesses; entrance for goods should be different from the staff and visitors entrance.
3. Skin issues
These issues normally fall under the expertise area of architects.
The role of building skin is moving from being a barrier to the external environment to increased importance providing natural ventilation, through inclusion of windows wherever practical (in some noisy and polluted cities, or in extreme climates, this could be not feasible or convenient).
Windows also play a major role when considering solar control. Solar radiation is, potentially, the most important external source of energy.
Even covering a small fraction of the facades, heat gain through the windows can be very significant. Normally, it is necessary to foreseen some overheating protection method. One common method is shading, which can be achieved through a set of different shading devices, including shutters, heavy structural or light protections, permanent or movable.
A combination of external and internal devices normally offers a balanced solution, including good protection against heat gain and adequate lighting levels user control. Also the use of polychromic glass or glass containing a reflective skin can give additional options.
4. Building services and technologies issues
Previously presented issues address building’s accessibility and adaptability. Building services and technologies, on the other hand, can be characterized in terms of how well they meet the requirements of the building’s occupants. Also, they have a short life cycle compared with the building shell or skin, which imposes their replacement a number of times during the life time of the building.
The following factors (among others) are, normally, addressed:
- HVAC zoning and control, which main function is to assure that physical environment characteristics will be kept within certain limits, namely temperature, ventilation and fresh air flow, and humidity (eventually).
The HVAC is normally controlled centrally by a dedicated building management system, allowing setting of temperatures for a predefined number of areas for each floor. Hopefully, HVAC control allows individual changing of the characteristics directly by the occupants, avoiding the need to contact central management;
- Small power and backup power provision, which support equipment operation during electric energy break-downs. Small power provision should provide power for information technology, audio visual, office equipment and personal lighting.
On the other hand, for larger organisations where IT is critical, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with up to one or two hour battery backup can be used to assure operation of IT and emergency systems. After the period of UPS autonomy, a standby generator can also be foreseen for longer periods of energy break-down;
- Cable distribution system also referred as structured cabling system, which can accommodate a variety of different cable types (namely UTP, STP, coax, optical fibre). One key aspect is on how easy is to reconfigure (or even modify) the system;
Communication systems, which are of major importance for most organisations, should be selected according with the amount and type of data that needs to be transmitted, security of data and time sensitivity/importance of data.
Issues to be considered include selection of an adequate PABX and digital links to the telecommunication providers, computer integrated telephony (and VoIP), cordless telephony, TV and image distribution, video-conference, among others. In this sense, communication network management requires an integrated approach due to its increasingly importance;
Lighting systems, which have been experiencing some changes during the last decades due to the intensive use of computers in offices, in order to reduce reflection problems in monitors. Two levels of control should be considered: one related with common areas, and the other one associated with areas for individual use, where local control should be provided (including specific task lights or dimming);
Building automation systems are evolving from autonomous and centralised to distributed and co-operative. In this sense, the building automation systems have been evolving towards small systems, providing local control, where the information between the components of the automation systems (the controllers) flows through data networks (dedicated or for general usage), and will feed central monitoring and supervising systems. Also, building automation sub-systems capabilities for interoperability support should be considered;
Access control and security can simply be supported by a security guard that will walk through the areas under monitoring activities, but can also integrate complex access control and surveillance systems, including CCTV cameras and card access systems that can be linked together with the building automation system.
Interoperability with other building systems may reduce the number of people involved in the monitoring of the building and allow extra functionalities for the overall performance. As an example, we can think about presence detectors, used for intrusion detection, which can trigger the lighting system, and can also be used for lighting control.
Office automation and business systems, including not only “normal” office supporting equipments (like optical document scanning and retrieval systems, electronic, voice and paper mail systems), but also audio-visual systems supporting video conferencing and in-house broadcast;
Space management systems, supported by specific geometric CAD (computer-aided-design) systems, have been increasing importance within Facility Management Information Systems (FMIS).