Vacancy: Passivhaus Design Engineer / Mechanical Building Services Engineer
Job summary WARM is seeking to appoint a Passivhaus Design Engineer or Mechanical Building Services Engineer who has experience in designing and delivering low energy buildings. We’re looking for someone educated to a degree level in engineering, science, maths or architecture and with at least 3 years’ experience in the construction sector. You will be responsible for assessing and providing energy design advice for Passivhaus buildings, a key cornerstone in delivering our low energy future. This challenging role demands the prospective candidate cares deeply about mitigating the climate and ecological emergency we are facing. We need you to challenge our processes, have opinions on what to address next and show initiative and confidence in order to lead on these issues when needed. We want to work with people who have ambitions of providing technical leadership, to take our business in whatever direction gets the greatest benefit. Our clients range from social housing providers to universities and their values align with ours; they want technical solutions that work and a team who really care. We are not just interested in compliance, but in an individual who is confident to question the standard to ensure it is the right approach. Supporting building work on site, testing the systems and undertaking post occupancy analysis are the methods we use to keep it real, so the changes we propose aren’t merely a success on paper. We were pioneered in 2009 by Sally and Pete the founding partners, as a research project aimed at identifying what real low energy buildings look like and how they behave. Because of our success, we are excited to be in the position to expand our team. The existing superstar team of nine specialists includes engineers and architectural technologists, all of whom want to share their thoughts and ideas with you; responsible for some of our most fabulous post occupancy research to date and was the mechanical services lead for Goldsmith street (shameless name drop), is Caroline for example, who with passion and drive puts her heart into each project. We need more Carolines……. or Karls or Liams, Nualas, Gareths, Ingrids or Emmas! “For a small practice the quality and breadth of the work we are involved in is staggering. The shared values, mutual respect and friendship present in the WARM office provide much opportunity for discussion and collaboration and mean that you are constantly learning and pushing the boundaries of sustainable design.“ One last thing, we’re based in Plymouth, a great hub from which to have wild adventures. Whilst longer term we would expect you to be in the office for at least one day per week (particularly in the first couple of years) but are willing to consider applicants working remotely. We have the most stunning West Country beaches, moors, rivers and woods on our doorstep, with Royal William Yard and Mount Edgecumbe Country Park quite literally a stone’s throw from our office, and did we mention we’re extremely flexible with time? What we want from you: We are interested in all levels of experience but ideally, successful applicants would be: Interested in being part of the solution! We are committed to designing truly sustainable buildings, looking at options on their merits and never scared to change our minds (just in case you didn’t get that from the first bit).Have a background in mechanical building services, even better if you’ve worked on building services for low energy/Passivhaus buildings.Inquisitive to ask your own questions, work out how to test your hypothesis and identify implications for design based on your research.Enjoy collaborating. We work across the industry with others, many of which would...
Read MoreVacancy: Graduate Design Engineer
Job summary WARM is seeking to appoint a Graduate Design Engineer to join our experienced team to design and deliver low energy building designs. We’re looking for someone educated to a degree level in engineering, science, maths or architecture. You will be responsible for assessing and providing energy design advice for Passivhaus buildings, a key cornerstone in delivering our low energy future. This challenging role demands the prospective candidate cares deeply about mitigating the climate and ecological emergency we are facing. We need you to challenge our processes, have opinions on what to address next and show initiative and confidence in order to lead on these issues when needed. We want to work with people who have ambitions of providing technical leadership, to take our business in whatever direction gets the greatest benefit. Our clients range from social housing providers to universities and their values align with ours; they want technical solutions that work and a team who really care. We are not just interested in compliance, but in an individual who is confident to question the standard to ensure it is the right approach. Supporting building work on site, testing the systems and undertaking post occupancy analysis are the methods we use to keep it real, so the changes we propose aren’t merely a success on paper. We were pioneered in 2009 by Sally and Pete the founding partners, as a research project aimed at identifying what real low energy buildings look like and how they behave. Because of our success, we are excited to be in the position to expand our team. The existing superstar team of nine specialists includes engineers and architectural technologists, all of whom want to share their thoughts and ideas with you; responsible for some of our most fabulous post occupancy research to date and was the mechanical services lead for Goldsmith street (shameless name drop), is Caroline for example, who with passion and drive puts her heart into each project. We need more Carolines……. or Karls or Liams, Nualas, Gareths, Ingrids or Emmas! “For a small practice the quality and breadth of the work we are involved in is staggering. The shared values, mutual respect and friendship present in the WARM office provide much opportunity for discussion and collaboration and mean that you are constantly learning and pushing the boundaries of sustainable design.“ One last thing, we’re based in Plymouth, a great hub from which to have wild adventures. Whilst longer term we would expect you to be in the office for at least one day per week (particularly in the first couple of years) but are willing to consider applicants working remotely. We have the most stunning West Country beaches, moors, rivers and woods on our doorstep, with Royal William Yard and Mount Edgecumbe Country Park quite literally a stone’s throw from our office, and did we mention we’re extremely flexible with time? What we want from you: We are interested in all levels of experience but ideally, successful applicants would be: Interested in being part of the solution! We are committed to designing truly sustainable buildings, looking at options on their merits and never scared to change our minds (just in case you didn’t get that from the first bit).Educated to degree level in engineering, science, maths or architecture related. We want you to be comfortable with numerical analysis so you can answer all our burning questions. Have a background in buildings, even better if you understand building thermal performance.Inquisitive to ask your own questions, work out how to test your hypothesis and identify implications for design based on your research.Enjoy collaborating. We work across the...
Read MoreWARM Take Home CIBSE Awards!
WARM won two awards at last night’s CIBSE Building Performance Awards! Sally and Caroline represented us. We were all chuffed, in particular with the Building Performance Consultancy award, as our practice numbers only 7 employees! Winner Building Performance Consultancy (up to 100 employees) Highly Commended Project of the Year – Residential Project: Cameron Close We’d like to thank the rest of the team involved on the Cameron Close project, notably: Building owner: Southern Housing Group Architect: PCKO Architects Mechanical/Electrical Engineering: Clarkes Mechanical Main Contractor: Stoneham...
Read MoreGoldsmith Street Passivhaus under construction
The Goldsmith Street Passivhuas project commissioned by Norwich City Council and being constructed by RG Carter is well underway on site. The Passivhaus development is progressing quickly, it will consist of 105 dwellings, a mix of 2- and 3-storey houses and apartment blocks. WARM role has been the mechanical service design and Passivhaus consultancy. We have developed simple services with the focus on designing for install, commissioning and use. Also, as Passivhaus consultants our input has been most notable on the glazing design, where we have helped balance heat loss, overheating risk and daylight design. Follow this link to see a drone footage of Goldsmith Street Passivhaus under construction: https://vimeo.com/262950617 ...
Read MoreIntake Location Calculation
On many projects we need to decide how close we can locate an air intake to a polluting exhaust or boiler flue. This workbook is for calculating the minimum recommended distances between intake and exhaust openings and boiler flues using the equation provided in ‘Annex A of BS EN 13779 Ventilation for non-residential buildings-Performance requirements for ventilation and room-conditioning systems’. Note that this calculation does not take into account directional louvres. Click to download: Intake Location Calculation Workbook...
Read MorePHPP WARM Results Sheet v6.06 Released
Dear all, Version 6.06 of our results sheet has just been released – now with added goodness! Click to download: PHPP WARM Results Sheet v6.07 (204.2 KiB, 5,633 hits) The biggest update is a button that automates the process of recording the current PHPP results in the “revision history” table. The sheet is also now compatible with PHPP 9.6. Important note: the button uses a macro to do its magic. Therefore, it will only work if the PHPP you are using is saved as a macro-enabled spreadsheet (.xlsm). However, you can still use the results sheet in a PHPP saved as .xlsx, it’s just that the button won’t do anything and you will have to copy and paste results manually. Full instructions on how to insert the sheet into your PHPP, and how to use it, are in the sheet itself. Compatible with all versions of PHPP 8 and 9, up to PHPP...
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