Section J Transformed: Stepping into energy change for commercial buildings

Frankie Muskovic:

All right. Well, good morning everyone and welcome to the Property Council's Forum Section J transformed: Stepping into energy change for commercial buildings. For those of you who don't know me I'm Frankie Muskovic. I'm the Property Council's National Policy Manager for Sustainability and Regulatory Affairs and I'll be taking you through this morning's seminar.

We're gathered in this I think lovely venue this morning to fill our minds with that useful knowledge on transformative change. But before we get to all of that, I'd like to respectfully acknowledge that we're meeting on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation this morning. I'd really like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to any indigenous Australians who are here with us this morning.

We have assembled the experts for you, so I'd like to welcome and acknowledge the speakers you'll be hearing from today. Right in front of me we've got Mike Dodd, Senior Project Officer from the Australian Building Codes Board. We've got Erica Kenna, the Acting Assistant Director from the Energy Efficient Communities Team at the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy.

We've got Monique Alfris, Acting Head of Technical Standards for the NABERS Program and Taryn Cornell, Green Star Technical Manager at the Green Building Council of Australia.

Before we go any further, just a small word of warning. This morning session is being filmed, so eventually the video of today's session will be uploaded to the ABCB's website, so at that time we'd really encourage you to share that widely with your networks.

It’s really great, we've been able to put on this series of seminars and we want to make the content accessible to as many people as possible.

The only people who will be filmed are those speaking up on the stage, so don't worry, you're not going to turn up on a video somewhere.

But please just note if you'd like to ask a question, there's no obligation for you to identify yourself before you ask that question today.

So we at the Property Council are pretty delighted to be hosting today's seminar in partnership with the ABCB. This is one of a national series of events aimed at educating the industry on what is the first substantial change to Section J of the NCC since it was introduced over a decade ago.

The running order for the day is as you see. Please note, we'll be pausing after that first round of presentations to take some questions and then we'll have a more I guess detailed Q&A session at the end with all of our panel of speakers. And another just note on what's to come.

We've received a lot of questions over the events that we've run so far, and I understand the ABCB will be taking on board a lot of those questions and feedback and they'll be putting together an FAQ section essentially on their website to respond to some of the questions that have been raised at this seminar series.

I mentioned the changes you're going to hear today, that they're a result of about four years worth of pretty comprehensive technical analysis and industry consultation. The policy drivers for this work are taken from the Commonwealth Government's target of a 40% increase to energy productivity by 2030.

Now that's set up currently in the Government's National Energy Productivity Plan and there are specific measures in there that call on the ability to raise minimum standards for both commercial and residential buildings. Although obviously the focus of NCC 2019's major changes and today's seminars is focused on commercial buildings.

I guess that policy mandate combined with the objective of Section J, which is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's going to require a pretty significant improvement in energy performance of new buildings from 1 May next year. The new Section J replaces the existing one after a 12 month transition period that we're, I guess, currently going through right now, but Mike's going to talk a little bit more about that as we get through the presentation.

We've worked with a few organizations to offer CPD points for you coming along today, so those are up on the slide there. After today, you'll be sent a certificate of attendance for coming along today. There'll be some instructions on how you get in touch with each of those organizations to claim CPD points, so please look out for that, that'll be coming out after today.

We're going to be taking you through the most substantial changes. It's fair to say there's more of a focus on building façade changes, but we want to get a sense of who's in the room so that we can, I guess, address any questions up front that you might have. So I just want to do a quick poll of the audience to see who we've got here today.

Could you raise your hand if you are an architect or designer? Lots of those, great. ESD consultants? Even more of those. Any mechanical or services engineers? Few of these. Building certifiers or surveyors? Not so many of you guys. Builders? Whoa, okay. Now I know who to shame for the rest of the session. Alrighty. That'll help us as we go through.

Just lastly, a really brief plug for the Property Council’s I think, much anticipated update to our guide to office building quality. This is going to be released at the end of the month. Note that the delay in releasing this was so that we could ensure that changes to Section J in the NCC were adequately recognized in our guide to office building quality. So you'll note that the parameters that reference energy performance are now consistent with the new Section J of the NCC. And in matters of housekeeping, bathrooms are just outside, and in the event of any emergency, we'll be following the lovely staff from the establishment who will escort us out of the building.

And with that... Look, that's enough from me. I'm going to hand you over to our first speakers. The only thing to say is we're not pausing for a formal break, so I'm going to be encouraging you to get up and stretch your legs or grab a coffee or a drink. We've got two and a half hours of hardcore Section J to go through this morning. It's a lot for early in the morning, so please feel free to get up and stretch and grab something to eat when you need.

So without further ado, our first presenters this morning are Mike Dodd and Erica Kenna. For the past two and a bit years, Mike Dodd's been managing the project that led to the Section J update. Prior to joining the ABCB, Mike spent about 15 years in various roles with Victorian Government bodies focused on sustainability programs in commercial and public buildings.

And Erica Kenna works on energy productivity policy and Commonwealth Building Energy Efficiency with the Commonwealth Government. She's worked in commercial building energy efficiency for almost 20 years and was also part of the technical team that developed the 2019 updates to Section J. So please welcome Mike Dodd.

Mike Dodd:

Hi everyone. Mike from the Australian Building Codes Board. Thank you all very much for coming today. There has been really significant changes to Section J of the National Construction Code for Volume One. If you compare a building built exactly to the DTS, so 2016, you're looking at about a 30 to 40% reduction in energy consumption depending on building location and building form.

But I think coupled with that stringency increase and greater energy efficiency, the way that we're asking for compliance to be demonstrated, the way that we're doing calculations, there's been some really significant changes there that we're asking of you now, and that's the bit I think which is probably most significant and where a lot of the detail we'll be going through today.

So the first half of this morning's presentation will be myself and Erica. I'm just going to talk briefly about the structure of the National Construction Code, it being a performance based code, and the changes we've made to the performance requirement for energy efficiency. Then I'll be handing over to Erica to deep dive into the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions for building facades especially, but we'll also look at the changes for services.

And then it'll be transferred to ask questions. Really a lot of the questions we've been getting have been around the changes to the DTS. And then after the short break, we'll talk a bit more about the new verification methods of NABERS Green Star, the changes to the use of JV3 and also JV4, the introduction of a blower door test as a voluntary compliance mechanism for building sealing.

Okay. I said I'm from the Australian Building Codes Board. I just wanted to say a couple of things about the ABCB, which may be of interest to understand where we're coming from, especially in terms of engaging with us if you choose to do so in the future. So our main function is to write the National Construction Code and to do education materials and resource materials around it.

We don't set building industry policy. We're a policy taker, not a policy maker. So we get a direction from something like the National Energy Productivity Plan or from the Building Ministers Forum. They ask us to investigate energy efficiency in commercial buildings because there's some evidence there, for example, that it can increase energy productivity or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then we take that and we run with it, but we don't set buildings policy.

Secondly, we're a COAG body, a Council of Australian Governments Body, so we have as much to do day to day with the various State and Territory Governments as we do with the Commonwealth. And that also means that when we make changes to the National Construction Code, it's in consultation with all the State and Territory bodies, which may be why some changes take a long time to get through, but it also means that there's a rigorous approach around how changes are made. And it means that changes can be locally specialised.

And finally, we are not the regulator. So while we write the National Construction Code, we are not responsible for saying in a specific case whether a building is or not compliant or, which version of the National Construction Code you should be using to seek certification under. That's the roles of your various State and Territory authorities and in consultation with your building certifiers. So just wanted to make that point, especially if the issues of compliance come up, which they often do in these type of conversations. I obviously have an opinion about compliance, but ABCB is not the regulator in that case.

Okay. So the National Construction Code, it's a performance based code. It sets the minimum acceptable standards for health, amenity, sustainability, structure, safety of Australia's buildings. It's been a performance based code now for 21 years. I'll go a bit more into what that means.

When we talk about a performance based code, what we're really talking about is that in each section of the code, there are a number of high level performance requirements. So in a Section J that's JP1 and JP3 currently, JP1 I'll go into a bit more detail in a sec, but essentially it's a high level statement, which says your building as a whole should be energy efficient.

When we're talking about compliance solutions, we're talking about a pathway that shows equivalence with the performance requirements. So that may be through the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, so you follow the cookbook approach and say, "I'm meeting all of these individual items," and that will show that my building meets the performance requirements, it's deemed to be equivalent, or I might use a performance solution. And some of those codified within the NCC, things like JV3, we introduced NABERS and Green Star now going forward, but hybrid solutions within the cutter are also possible. So if you're following JV3 for example, you're also going to be asked to and need to show compliance with some of the DTS aspects as well.

So when we're talking about a performance solution, it's not necessarily at the whole building level, it's another point I think it's important to make. You can develop a performance solution just to show equivalence with one aspect of the DTS and then use DTS as your overall compliance pathway.

Essentially, what we're really doing is showing compliance with that overall performance requirement. The DTS or JV3 or JV1 are not mandatory legal requirements. The performance requirement is the mandatory legal requirement. That's what we're showing within energy efficiency. What we're talking about is a building on the whole that is energy efficient. Okay

So Frankie, I'll come back to performance requirements in just a sec, but as Frankie mentioned, we have a transition period in place for the changes we've made to the code. So just to try and explain that as best I can, from the 1st of May this year until the 30th of April next year, you can choose to use either the NCC 2016 energy efficiency provisions, or the 2019 energy efficiency provisions, but you have to choose one or the other.

From 1st of May next year, NCC 2019 will be the code that you'll be following, but we have a transition period in place. Given the extensive changes to the energy efficiency requirements, industry asked and we were happy to provide a one year transition period to give you time to get your head around the new provisions, more time for us to develop resources for you to draw upon when you're designing your buildings, and essentially it's more time to get systems in place.

So just to remind you, you can use 2016 or 2019, but you can't mix and match. You have to pick a lane, and when you see the extensive changes we've made it'll become clear as to why.

Okay. I just want to jump back to the performance requirement now before I finish up and hand over to Erica. So there have been changes to the performance requirement within NCC 2016, so just a reminder, when we're talking about Volume One in Section J, we're talking about commercial buildings, a class two to nine buildings including apartments, but the changes we're making are essentially only to the common areas of apartment buildings.

The NABERS requirement for the SOC EMSI units is pretty much unchanged. Okay. So the performance requirements. Currently within NCC 2016, there are two performance requirements, JP1, which is essentially a series of qualitative statements saying a building will be energy efficient, and I'll go into a bit more detail, and JP3, which addresses the greenhouse intensity of the energy source for heating, essentially asks for a low intensity heating source. It's essentially preferences gas and renewable energy over electricity.

Okay. So what's changed for 2019? So first of all we no longer have the requirement around JP3 for greenhouse intensity of heating sources. And that's essentially because we've introduced now a whole of a building quantified performance requirement, which means that there's no need to have a separate one for heating.

Okay. So those series of qualitative statements about energy efficiency. So these are the ones that you'll see in NCC 2016. Essentially they're saying that you're building, depending on its... will be energy efficient to the degree necessary when taking into account its location, its use, its form, its function, the internal environment, the behaviour of the occupants and so forth. So what's changed in 2019? There's two key changes.

Firstly, we've replaced two of those qualitative statements, one which is to do with the internal environment, and one which is to do with air speed with human comfort. So the intent of that and what we're really saying is a building should be energy efficient, but not to the detriment of the occupants comfort.

Secondly, we've introduced a quantified hourly regulated energy component to it. So these numbers have been set, for example, in a class six building, a retail of 80 kilojoules per square meter per hour, for a class five 43 kilojoules per square meter per hour or a class two building at 15 kilojoules per square meter per hour.

Now these numbers have been set intentionally very stringently, but they allow the possibility of demonstrating compliance with J1 at a whole of building level if your building meets these quantified performance targets that we've introduced to the code and you can show you're meeting the intent of the qualified statements.

Now, we're not expecting that there'll be a lot of people who choose this compliance pathway, so essentially it would be a detailed energy modelling approach and we do have materials that you can draw upon around that, but it is a compliance pathway. It always has been a compliance pathway just to do a pure performance solution to show compliance with performance requirements in any aspect of the code. But most people choose to use the Deemed-to-Satisfy or Verification Method.

One of the things to keep in mind though is just because we have a quantified target now within the performance requirement doesn't mean that either the Deemed-to-Satisfy approach or the Performance Solution approach becomes invalid, they remain valid pathways for sharing compliance.

The way that the code is structured is that if you follow the DTS pathway or the prescriptive approaches in JV3, JV1, they're deemed to be equivalent with the performance requirement even if your overall building doesn't hit that kilojoules per square meter per hour target. Essentially they're all ways of saying that the building overall is energy efficient. Okay. Just a little bit on the structure of the code. Okay.

That's all from me for now, I'll be coming back to talk about JV3 later on. I'd like to hand over to Erica to talk about the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions for facades and services. Thanks very much for your time today. I hope to get a chance to talk to you further today.

Erica Kenna:

Thank you Mike. And good morning everyone. It's great to see so many people here this morning to hear about Section J and I think we can see that when Sydney siders say they're going to show up, they actually do. So it's a great audience here this morning.

So just a little bit of orientation to start with before I take a deep dive into the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, especially those around the façade. Because for those of you who aren't immersed every day in Section J, it can feel a bit like you may be drowning in a sea of alphabet soup where everything starts with J, we've got J0s, JPs, JVs and Js.

So what I'm going to be talking about for the next half hour, as Mike has said, is the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, which is parts J0 to J8 of the code. Those are the cookbook approach to creating a building that just complies with Section J. Of course that does, as Mike has said, also feed into the performance solution because you can use the Deemed-to-Satisfy to define the benchmark building for either JV3 or for your Green Star simulation, which we'll hear more about later. So that's the orientation.

Now it's time to spend a bit of time looking at the details of what's happening in those Deemed-to-Satisfy parts of the code. So starting out with the building fabric provisions, J1 to J3. Actually I'm going to start out looking at J1 and we've had two big changes and one thing that kind of stays the same.

So the first of the big changes is that whereas previously in NCC 2016, we separately looked at the opaque part of the fabric in Part J1 and the glazing in Part J2. We now combine those together and look at them together in the new Part J1 for 2019. That creates some extra flexibility for designers because now if you need to improve something to comply, you can either improve your opaque parts or your windows. You have a choice about how to do that to create an overall design that is compliant. So improved flexibility is actually going to be one of the themes of my talk today. So that's the first big thing that's changed.

The second big change is that whereas in NCC 2016 you had to look at each aspect individually and make sure that each aspect individually complied, especially, this is in regards to Part J2 when you were looking at the glazing, you now have the option to look at all of the aspects together. So you can still look at each aspect individually and we call that Method 1. You can still do that, but if you like, you can also or you can alternatively choose to look at all the aspects together, so that also creates extra flexibility. It means that you can trade off different facades against each other. So you can have one façade, which is maybe slightly underperforming so long as you have another façade that's slightly over-performing.

So that should help people to stay within the Deemed-to-Satisfy pathway more often and possibly means that there might be less use of the JV3 performance solution. The other thing that that should do is that it should allow you to possibly use more consistent products across your different aspects. So you may not end up with a situation that we used to have where buildings had 50 shades of grey or at least two or three shades of grey on the different aspects.

So, that applies whether you're looking at either the U-Value requirement or the Solar Admittance requirements, so I'll talk about that more in the next few minutes. So that's the two big things that have changed. The thing that's kind of stayed the same is that we have different levels of stringency depending on how the building's likely to be used or actually depending on the classification of the building.

So for buildings that are likely to run long hours, we have a higher level of stringency and that applies both to the U-Value requirements and the Solar Admittance requirements. So that applies to buildings like hotels, hospital wards, aged care, and so on. We have a tougher level of stringency there because in those buildings that operate really long hours, of course the energy consumption in that building is more likely to be determined by the outside conditions. And then we have a lower level of stringency for daytime use buildings.

For all types of buildings though, whether it's a classification of building that's likely to run overnight or whether it's a classification of building that's likely to just run during the day, you will generally find that is it's the Solar Admittance criteria that's the limiting value or the limiting feature when you're following the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, that will be the limiting feature rather than the U-Value characteristic. And that reflects in Australian buildings, practically everywhere in Australia, for commercial buildings, it's the solar gains that are driving your energy consumption in the building, so it's the Solar Admittance criteria that's going to be the critical one when you're trying to design a building that complies.

So I'm going to go through both the U-Value criteria and the Solar Admittance criteria now in the next few minutes. So we'll start out with U-Values, even though as I just said this is actually a bit less important here in Australia, but of course, we've still got some criteria that you need to follow if you're using the Deemed-to-Satisfy pathway.

So just to look at what those are, for most buildings in most climate zones, there's a requirement to achieve a U-Value of two. So this U-Value is assessed on an area weighted average based on the thermal conductance through both the glazed and the opaque elements of the façade, so that U of 2, is the combined effect of both your windows and your walls.

However, as I have said, we do have some tighter requirements for some building classifications, those ones that are likely to be used overnight. So we go down as low as a U of 0.9, which means less conduction for a building that's likely to operate overnight in Climate Zone 8. So that's the, as I said, the overall value, so combining both the glazing and the opaque walls.

We do also have a minimum requirement for your opaque wall elements and this is a minimum R-Value, we call this our backstop R. So just for the benefit of people here who haven't come from a technical background, the R-Value is kind of the opposite of U-Value. The R-Value looks at how much resistance the building is putting up to the heat flow through the façade whereas the U-Value is looking at how much heat is conducted through the façade. So the R-Value is the inverse of the U-Value and a higher R-Value is better, whereas a lower U-Value is better.

So for the opaque wall elements, we have a minimum R-Value of 1 in buildings that are moderately to highly glazed and a higher or more stringent minimum R-Value of 1.4 to 3.8 for buildings where there's a low window to wall ratio. So those tougher R-Values in buildings with lower window to wall ratios reflect the fact that obviously the opaque wall is having a bigger share of the impact in those buildings with a lower window to wall ratio. And it also reflects the fact that it is actually easier to build a better insulated type of opaque wall construction in a building with a really low window to wall ratio in particular where you don't have spandrels. And so I guess when you look at these minimum wall R-Value backstops, your first thought might be, and my first thought was, well they don't look really hard at all. Like for a lot of climate zones under NCC 2016, we had a wall R requirement of 2.8, whereas here we've got a requirement of 1 for lots of buildings in lots of climate zones. So that kind of looks easy, but as I said it can be hard to achieve, especially if you have spandrels. It can be hard to get to an R-Value of 1 without having a thermal break.

And the big thing that has changed is that we are now saying explicitly in NCC 2019 that you must calculate the effect of thermal bridging when you're calculating the R-Value. So that's why these values that look a little bit easy actually aren't because when now saying you have to count for thermal bridging and that can make a really big difference when...

Mike Dodd:

It's an existing requirement.

Erica Kenna:

Yes. Okay. So Mike's just pointing out to me it was actually a requirement in NCC 2016 to calculate thermal bridging as well. However, that requirement wasn't stated explicitly in the code. Now it is stated explicitly in the code and because it previously wasn't explicit, it was frequently overlooked, and it frequently wasn't done. Whereas now because we've been explicit about it, you have to do it and we've actually created some tools to help you with that, which I'm going to be talking about more later.

So just because not everybody here is familiar with thermal bridging because as I just said, it hasn't always been done even though it probably should have, I'm just going to briefly outline the concept for you. So in this chart here, in this figure here you can see a few different types of thermal bridges in a structure. So the thermal bridge is an area where there's a locally high heat conductance, and basically it means you're bypassing the insulation.

So in this picture there are actually three thermal bridges even though there's only arrows pointing to two. So firstly, we have the insulation batts that are being bypassed by the steel frame. Secondly, we have the sort of fastenings or brick ties there that are bypassing that blue layer of continuous insulation that you can see near the outside of the construction.

And thirdly, there's the slab itself, which is projecting out to the edge of the construction. So there's three types of thermal bridges here. Just as an aside, if any of you are looking at this picture and thinking, “wow, that looks really well insulated, we don't really build buildings like that here in Australia”, I must admit, if you can read the fine print, this graphic is actually from Canada. So that's probably a place where you can't get away at all with ignoring thermal bridging, but here in Australia now, what we're saying in the code explicitly is that you must calculate the impact of thermal bridges when you're calculating R-Values or U-Values and that you do that using AS/NZS 4859.2:2018. And that Australian standard in turn references New Zealand Standard 4214.

And what it tells you how to do is how to calculate the impact of the thermal bridges due to the frame elements that might be bridging the insulation. And the way that it does that is that it basically takes the bridged layers in the structure, so in this structure that would be the bulk insulation which is bridged and any adjacent air gap. And it says that in those bridged layers, there's sort of two alternative heat paths, one is through the insulation and the other one is the bridge itself. So the method considers both the thermal resistance of those heat paths, which is what's shown in this picture and it also considers the relative area of those two different heat paths.

And in this example you can see the impact of the thermal bridging. If you just add up the R-Values of each layer in that construction sequentially, you get to an R-Value of 2.58. Whereas if you take into account the bridging of the insulation, you get to an R-Value of 1.0. So that's, you can see 60% D rating, so it really matters.

So that's basically everything that I've got to say about calculating U-Values and R-Values for the moment, but we will, as I said, we've created a tool to help you, which is a calculator and I'll come back to that in a few minutes. But before I do that, I'm going to talk to you about the Solar Admittance criteria.

And as I said earlier, for most buildings, this is going to be the item which is really going to drive your design or limit your design. So similar to the U-Value calculation, you can look at each aspect of the façade individually, which is Method 1, or you can look at all aspects of the façade together at the same time in a kind of area weighted way, which is Method 2.

So just looking at what Method 1 is, when you're calculating the Solar Admittance, you consider the wall to glazing area, you consider the solar heat gain coefficient of your glass and you would adjust that for any shading that’s supplied. And then you'll come up with a Solar Admittance figure basically by multiplying those things together. And you can compare that to the limiting value that's set in the code. And if you're following Method 1, you do that individually for each orientation, so North, South, East and West.

If you're following Method 2, what you do is that you use the Solar Admittance values that you've calculated for each aspect individually and you apply a weighting depending on how important that is, depending on which direction it's facing. And you use that to come up with an Air Conditioning Energy Value, which you can then compare to the one that just complies based on Deemed-to-Satisfy. So if your proposed building has a lower Air Conditioning Energy Value, then you've complied with this aspect. So I should just point out something that is potentially confusing here in relation to the terminologies just to make sure that nobody is confused.

When we’re talking about the air conditioning energy value, it is purely calculated from the geometry of the building. So as I've said, the window to wall area, the solar heat gain coefficient, the shading adjustment and so on. There is no actual requirement to simulate the building to estimate its air conditioning energy consumption and you're certainly not measuring the air conditioning energy consumption. So we call it that, but it is just a geometric value.

So that's Method 2, which is considering all of the aspects together. So when we were talking about U-Values, I did actually put up a slide which showed how the maximum U-Values looked. So I've got a little slide here and it's pretty much a bit difficult to take in all these numbers, but this shows you how the solar admittance values look just for Method 1.

So the main thing to note here is that there are two tables. The top one is relating to the classifications of building that are most likely to be used during the daytime, and the bottom table is relating to buildings that are likely to be used overnight. And as I've said earlier, in general, all of the stringencies are higher or tougher for those buildings that are likely to be operating for longer hours. So we have lower solar admittance values in those cases.

So, that's basically everything about solar admittance, but just before I finish talking about... Well, before I go on to show you the calculator tool that we've made, I did actually want to mention retail display glazing. So just as you could with NCC 2016, you could treat retail display glazing separately from the rest of the glazing in the building and that's still true in NCC 2019.

So we do have some, I guess, more relaxed requirements for the retail display glazing. However, one thing that has been clarified in NCC 2019 is in relation to the treatment of cafes and restaurants. So what we're now clearly saying is that cafes and restaurants don't get any special dispensation for having retail display glazing. So if you have a clothes shop like the one in the picture, that's fine, you can use the more relaxed values. But if you have a café or a restaurant, you have to use the same approach that we talked about earlier this morning with the rest of the façade. So actually it can be a little bit difficult to know whether a tenancy is going to be a café or a restaurant or some other kind of retail.

I guess that's going to be up to your professional judgment to determine that, but what we do suggest is that if there's provision for a kitchen makeup air, a kitchen exhaust system, that's an indication that the tenancy can be used as a café or a retail... Sorry, café or restaurant, I should say. So in that case, if it's going to be a café or a restaurant it doesn't get the special dispensation for retail display glazing.

Okay. And just before we finish looking at Section J1, I wanted to briefly talk about roofs and floors and go through what the main changes were there. So for roofs, the solar absorptance criteria is now limited to 0.45, so that should see some more light coloured roofs. For roof lights, there's been some simplifications.

So previously there was five area weighted categories, now we're just looking at two. And for floors, while we do have the same total R-Value requirement, regardless of whether the floor is a suspended floor or a slab on ground, the code does say that you must take into account the insulating effect of the sub-floor airspace or of the soil under the floor. And of course you use a different approach to that depending on whether it's a suspended floor or a slab on grade.

So the code tells you what the insulating effect is of those items in specification J1.6 or you can use section 3.5 of CIBSE Guide A to take into account the impact of the sub floor space or the soil. So that's pretty much everything I'm going to say about Part J1.

However, as I promised, we have made a tool to help you with this and I'm going to briefly take you through this façade calculator now. So before we have a look at a preview of the façade calculator, I just want to talk briefly about why you would use it. Well, the first thing is basically it makes your life a lot easier. You can use it to calculate the total system U-Value, so that's the area weighted U-Value of the glazing and the opaque elements of the construction. You can use it to do the solar admittance calculations.

It does take into account thermal bridging by the frame elements using the New Zealand standard 4214 and the Australian standard 4859. You can also use it to check that your total R-Value backstop has been met for your opaque wall elements. It's flexible, you can do either Method 1 or Method 2, and you can use it as a bit of a design tool to optimise things. It also generates a summary report so that you can share what you've done with other people. And as well as being quite useful if you're following the Deemed-to-Satisfy pathway, it can also help you to define your reference building if you're going to be following JV3.

So just a little sneak peek of what that looks like. For people who have already used the glazing calculator in NCC 2016, you'll see that the façade calculator is a bit different. There are actually about five screens or five tabs in the Excel spreadsheet now where you have to enter the data for your building. So as opposed to the glazing calculator, I think everything was entered in the one tab. So that does seem a bit more complicated, but actually this calculator is doing more for you than what the glazing calculator was in NCC 2016. And to make life a little bit easier, we do have a library, so you can use that library to store constructions that you've defined and you can use that for other projects so that you don't have to re enter the same data every time.

There's also some defaults in that library, so default glazing, default windows, default constructions, and that is a good place to get started if you're just playing around. So just a little example of how the façade calculator looks and we'll see in the example the way thermal bridging is calculated, we'll see that opaque wall backstop and we'll have a look at both Method 1 and Method 2.

And this example is going to be published by the ABCB at the same time that the façade calculator is released. So the details are all in that published case study, but if you're looking to find that case study, it's the Class 3 student accommodation building in Melbourne and this, as I said, will be released at the same time that the façade calculator is released and that is going to be very soon basically. It hasn't been released yet but it will be soon.

So just looking at how the process works. So as I said, there's a number of screens. The first one enters general information about the building including the building classification and the climate zone because the building classification and the climate zone are important in determining the stringencies, so you enter them here.

Once you've done that, you enter some information about the glazing systems, so you have to enter the type of window that is the mechanism, glass type and frame type. It's interesting to note that you'll have to enter both the system total U-Value and solar heat gain coefficient for the window as well as the glass U-Value and solar heat gain coefficient, so both of those items get entered. And probably a big thing to note here is that when you're entering the window total system U-Value and solar heat gain coefficient, it's actually asking for the methodology by which that was calculated. So it's not like the previous glazing calculator where you can just pull a number out of the air though I'm sure you should not have been doing that, but you do have to identify the methodology here. So there's a bit more accountability around that because that is shown in the report that the tool generates.

So the methodology is based on a dropdown list, you can either enter the AFRC true module size for the window that's been specified or you can enter the WERS label based on default module size. So it's important if you're using this to support a compliance process that what you're entering does reflect the actual module size of the windows that have been specified. So that's the glazing.

Once you've entered the glazing, there's a chance to enter information on walls and we've got this nifty build a wall tool where you can enter each layer sequentially. It does ask whether the frame is made out of... Well, you can either enter a timber frame or a metal frame and then the calculator will take into account the thermal bridging based on some basic information about that frame.

Once you've done that the calculator will calculate the opaque wall system R-Value. You can see in this example that that is 2.85, which is above the backstop, so that's good. We can proceed. We haven't fallen at the first hurdle this time, so let's go on. Once you've entered the walls and the windows, you just need to enter some information on the areas. I should actually just say that there is also a separate tab where you enter some information on shading, but I haven't shown you that here today because in the first instance, this case study building doesn't have any external shading. So we enter some very simple information on the areas of the walls and the windows and then we've got everything that we need to calculate the results.

So as I said, the calculator does that using both Method 1 and Method 2. In this first instance, actually we didn't quite get there in Method 1 or Method 2. So you can see that we've gone over our U-Value limits in every aspect, we've gone over our solar admittance limits in every aspect, and in Method 2 we also don't comply.

So in this example, we did some optimising and we changed the frame from an aluminium framed windows to uPVC framed window. And we added shades to the fixed windows, so sorry that bit on shutters, they're not insulated shutters, it's just shades on the windows, vertical shade devices. And by making those changes, we did see that all of a sudden our building now complies with Part J1 using... Well, the calculator's indicating that the façade elements are likely to comply with Part J1 here.

So you can see though, interestingly, that we haven't complied using Method 1 because our south façade is still not quite good enough. We're still going over the solar admittance limit on the south façade. However, we have complied on Method 2 and that's okay because you don't need to be okay on both Method 1 and Method 2, you only need to be okay on one or the other.

So we've gone a bit worse on the south façade, but because our other aspects are going a bit better, we're okay with Method 2, we got there. So that's the case study, and the only other thing to highlight is that as I said, you can use the calculator even if you're following JV3 to define your reference buildings, so your reference building is basically your building that has the same geometry as your proposed building, but only just complies with the DTS. When you have the option to do that either without shading or with shading and it will just, depending on whether you select with or without shading, it will adjust the other parameters to give you a building that only just complies. So that's basically everything I've got to say about facades. So just summarising now.

We've had two big changes, so the first thing is that the opaque façade elements and the glazing, whereas they were separately assessed in Parts J1 and J2 before are now all assessed together in Part J1. Second big change is that we can either look at each aspect individually or we can look at the combined impact of all of the aspects together in Method 2.

We do still have different stringency settings based on the class of the building and obviously based on the location of the building. We've clarified the treatment of thermal bridging, so now it's really clear that you do have to take it into account and we provided a façade calculator tool that does that for you, amongst other things calculates the impact of the thermal bridging.

So that's the end of facades almost, but just to briefly talk about buildings sealing. There has been a change made to say that rapid roller doors are now required where there's a loading dock that opens to a conditioned area in the building. So that's the big change there in regards to building sealing.

So now I'm going to be talking about the services for a little while and I've got a pretty high level presentation of what's happening with the services, but I just wanted to highlight that for those of you who are services engineers, there is some more detailed material that's going to be presented very shortly.

So the Illuminating Engineering Society are running a seminar here in Sydney tomorrow night. So if anyone's interested in lighting design in particular and the way that the changes in Section J are impacting there, come along to the seminar tomorrow night. You can sign up for that through the IES website. And for those of you who are on the mechanical side, ERA will be running a Section J seminar in Sydney on the 12th of June, and you can sign up to that through the ERA website.

So just to give you an overview though of what the main changes are, and I'll start out with mechanical. So in Part J5, generally there's been a lot of stringency increases and that is actually reflecting the fact that there's been a lot of technological change over the last 10 years and that the market's moved on. So really the code is catching up to where the market's at.

So for boilers, the stringency has now been set such that it aligns with the specification of condensing boilers in all applications, so that's the big change there. For chillers and PAC units, the stringency has also been increased there. It now aligns with MEPS. So whereas previously what was specified in the NCC was worse than where MEPS sat, and was basically giving kind of a free kick to people who were using the JV3 method, so that's been tightened up considerably. For heat rejection systems, we've changed the way that we're specifying the efficiency as well as changing the efficiency criteria themselves.

So whereas previously the efficiency was specified in terms of the fan kilowatts per litre per second, it's now specified in terms of the fan... Sorry, fan watts per litres per second I should say. It's now specified in terms of the fan watts per kilowatt of heat that's rejected, so that's a more sensible way of doing it. Similarly, for economy cycles, we're now specifying whether or not you need an economy cycle based on the air flow through the system rather than on the refrigeration capacity of that air conditioning system.

And for outside air, there's actually been some changes there so that in most buildings in most climate zones you'll actually need to have either a modulation arrangement so that if your building's not occupied to its design level, you can turn down the outside air volume or there'll need to be a heat recovery system in place. So that's the high level on Part J5.

There's also been some changes to fans and pumps. So firstly, we're changing the whole philosophy of how we set those efficiency levels. So previously it was specified in terms of watts per metre squared of area being served. We considered that that was a bit unfair because the building geometry can have a big influence on where you can get to in terms of what's per metre squared and that's out of the control of the air conditioning designer, so that was unfair.

Also, depending on whether you went with an air-based or a water-based system where air or water was your main fluid for distributing heat through the building, you would end up with a target that was either too easy or too hard. So we've moved away from the watts per metre squared figure and we've now set some criteria for basically each element of your air distribution system and your water distribution system.

So for example, with fans, there's an efficiency requirement based on the system pressure and the fan motor size. There's a pressure drop requirement that's been specified for each element of your distribution system and there’s a limit on the amount of flexible duct that you're allowed to have, which is just limited to six metres. Similarly, for pumps or for water distribution systems, there's an efficiency criteria for the pump itself, which is aligning with European minimum standards. And then we have a pressure drop criteria for each element of the water distribution system.

So just the same as with the facades though. We've actually also taken the approach of saying you can assess each of those elements individually. So this is a really good analogy for breakfast time. You can look at whether all of the ingredients of your favourite breakfast are up to standard and whether every single one of those complies by itself, or you can look at the whole breakfast together and say, "Is it just as tasty"? So you can have basically a little bit of trading off happening.

Some parts of your system maybe being a little bit worse, some parts of your system maybe being a little bit better, it's very similar to what we're doing with the facades on the different aspects there. And again, it may mean more ability to stay within the JV3...Sorry, to stay within the DTS pathway for more buildings.

However, we did also have a little bit of feedback that the fan efficiency methodology in particular was a little bit difficult to use in the DTS. So in the DTS, the requirement for fan efficiency varies depending on whether you're above... whether your system pressure drop is above 200 pascals or below 200 pascals, you have a different approach basically and your efficiency requirements also depending on the fan motor kilowatts.

So the ABCB has worked with the Fan Manufacturers Association of Australia and New Zealand to develop this alternative, which is a performance based design solution. This will be published very soon. This can be applied right across the entire pressure range as an alternative way of determining your fan efficiency requirement. So that's everything on mechanical. You can hear more about that at the ERA seminar on the 12th of June. Now quickly looking at lighting, so just the same as mechanical, we have had some big increases in stringency here and obviously there has been a huge amount of change in the last 10 years in terms of the rollout of LEDs, meaning that lighting generally is far more efficient than it was.

So the illumination power density limits have been decreased by roughly about 60% compared with what was there in NCC 2016. There's also been some changes to exterior lighting. If you have more than 100 watts of exterior lights, they do need to be specified with LEDs. So while those illumination power density limits have been tightened up a lot, we do still allow some adjustments to those based on different elements of the design that are probably outside of the designer's control.

So basically depending on your room aspect ratio, the geometry of your room can make it harder to achieve a really low wattage lighting system. So if you have some really difficult geometry that you're dealing with, the code accommodates that and there is still a process in the code where you can adjust your illumination power density limit based on the room geometry using the room aspect ratio.

We also have an adjustment based on whether any control devices are installed. So whether you have an occupancy sensor or a daylight dimming system or a lumen depreciation dimming system, all of those things can mean that your lighting system runs more efficiently than if they weren't there, and the code reflects that by giving you a control device adjustment, which then applies as an adjustment to your illumination power density target.

So the other thing that we now also recognise is that depending on the colour rendering index that you're trying to achieve, or the colour temperature, that does also affect the power use of your lights. So if you're trying to achieve a very high colour rendering index or a warm white type of light, that does incur some extra energy use, but it does provide a particular service that you might need. So we've recognised that in the code by also allowing adjustment factors for those items.

So that's everything about lighting, but in J6 we now also have some new things that we weren't covering before. So we were not covering lifts or moving walkways and we've got some new provisions there that are really just about coming up to where business as usual is sitting. So for example, the lift car lighting and ventilation must shut down now when the lift is unused, and we have a standby energy limit based on the lift load capacity in kilos, and we have a energy efficiency criteria based on how much the lift is likely to be used. And that's aligning with international standards. As I said, it should really be business as usual. And similarly for escalators and moving walkways, they should slow down when nobody's using them.

And just quickly for pools and spas, generally the changes here in Part J7 have been to align with Part J5. So your pool water heater thermal efficiency, if it's a gas boiler, now it should also be a condensing boiler, just the same as is specified for air conditioning system boilers in Part J5. The pipework insulation for a pool or spa also must meet the same requirements that are specified in Part J5. And there's a requirement now for pool covers to have a minimum R-Value, so that is also a new item. And the other thing that we've done is that we've removed the restriction that we previously had where solar heaters for pools were not allowed to be electric boosted. So that's been removed and it's similar to what Mike said earlier when we got rid of JP3. It's not as simple as gas is good electricity's bad anymore, so that's why that requirements been removed.

And finally for Part J8, there's a requirement now for time of use metering data to feedback to the central monitoring system. This will hopefully allow building managers to check that their building is actually performing at the level intended and to track the energy use of the building.

So just wrapping up, for services, the fans, pumps, boilers, chillers and lighting stringency levels have all been increased quite significantly, but this is really reflecting where the market's gone in the last 10 years and aligning now with where the market's at.

We have changed the way that fan and pump systems are assessed in Part J5 quite significantly. We've now got the flexibility so that you can either look at each aspect of the system individually or you can choose to look at all aspects of a system together to see whether you've met your efficiency requirements, so allowing some trading off there within a system.

We have improved the lighting target... Sorry, we've improved the lighting stringency levels, but we still allow you to adjust for that based on your room geometry, based on your control devices and based on the service quality you're achieving in terms of the colour rendering index and the colour temperature. And now for the first time ever, the code is regulating lifts and moving walkways. So that's actually the end of my presentation.

Frankie Muskovic:

We're now moving on to hear a bit more about the verification methods that are available in NCC 2019. So we're going to first hear from Monique Alfris from NABERS on the NABERS method JV1, and then Taryn Cornell from the GBCA on Green Star method JV2. And then Mike will make another encore appearance at the end and he's going to talk us through changes to JV3 and the introduction of a new post-construction verification method for building ceiling JV4.

So I'd just like to introduce to you, I guess, our next speakers. Monique is the Acting Head of Technical Standards at NABERS. She's probably well known to most of you. Monique has worked on delivering the NABERS co-assess rating tool, a new application process for office buildings.

She's also worked on the expansion of NABERS for shopping centres tools to centres smaller than 15,000 square meters and she's also worked on the NABERS for apartment buildings tool.

Taryn Cornell, as well at the GBCA, focuses on the development and innovation of the Green Star rating tools, ensuring they're aligned with industry needs and standards. Having worked for over a decade in interior and architectural design, Taryn has a detailed knowledge and considered approach to design, project delivery and stakeholder engagement. Please join me in first welcoming Monique then Taryn.

Monique Alfris:

Hi everyone. Thanks for having me here today to tell you a little bit about JV1, one of the new methods in the building code for the use of NABERS. Firstly, I just want to say that I think that this is a really great update to the building code overall. It's one of the biggest changes that we've seen over the last decade of the building code being in place. I just wanted to give kudos to the ABCB for all the great work that they've done in this update. And it's really bringing Australia in line with other countries around the world that have also made big improvements in the energy efficiency components of their building code.

So first of all I just wanted to start off with another little poll, which is how many of you know about NABERS, have heard about NABERS in some way? And leave your hands up if you have quite a good understanding of NABERS. Okay, so a few of you left in the room.

Just to quickly start off with, NABERS provides a language for sustainability. We're basically a rating scheme for the environmental performance of your building, so we do tend to focus on that performance side of how buildings are actually operating. When benchmarks are set, the average building is set at the 3 star level. The 6 star level is the market leading end of the scale, and that usually equates to about a 75 to 80% reduction in energy consumption compared to the average building. A 1 star building is down at the other end of the scale, there's a lot of opportunity for improvement with buildings down this end of the scale and they are using 75 to 80% more energy than the average building. We do provide zero star ratings as well, as Paul Bannister often says to me, "We have zero stars because there's no limit to how bad buildings can be." So we have that sort of different series of the scale.

What we've actually seen in Australia is that, which I'm going to go into in a moment, is that whilst 3 stars was the average when the benchmarks were set, it is no longer the average for buildings in the office sector.

Sectors currently covered by NABERS are quite a few. As Frankie mentioned, I've worked on the apartment buildings and shopping centres expansion, but we do also have rating tools for data centres, public hospitals and hotels. I mention all of these because later this year we are going to be expanding our commitment agreements program into other sectors that we cover as well, so there is the opportunity for the NABERS method to be used in the building code for other buildings sectors not just offices, but for the moment it is just the offices sector.

So we've been around for about 20 years and in that time we have seen a massive growth in the NABERS program. So this slide is basically showing you that we have seen a really large uptake in the number of buildings across Australia that are getting NABERS ratings. We're seeing penetration of about 85 to 90% of office base buildings across Australia that are getting ratings.

And for buildings that have participated in our program over 10 years, we have seen the average building reduce their energy intensity by about 40%, which is a pretty incredible result. It's actually the fastest rate of reduction that we've seen globally for any sector. And this isn't just the best buildings, it's not the worst buildings, it's the average building that's participating in the NABERS scheme.

The reason that I'm telling you this is because this relates to what I was saying about the average building. We have really seen buildings push up into that 5 star and 6 star rated categories in the last few years. This graph is showing you the number of ratings that we're seeing in both of those categories, and particularly we're seeing this push into the six star, which those purple bars in the last two or three years.

And what the industry is telling us is that it is possible to achieve those ratings today with cost-effective technology, and really the way that these buildings are being delivered now is about making sure that they are being constructed well and then that they're being operated well. Not by using fancy technologies that may seem like technologies of the future, which I think makes the benchmark that the ABCB has set at 5.5 stars quite a reasonable one in terms of what we're hearing and where we're saying ratings pushing to.

Okay. So now why we're all here... Oh, sorry, and just on that as well, there were a few questions in some of the other forums about whether these are ratings with green power. These are actually ratings without green power, so these are the ratings that are purely based on the energy efficiency operation of the buildings. Just to make that clear.

So yes, why we're all here, which is the JV1 NABERS method, which actually uses a product that we have in the NABERS program called commitment agreements, which I'm going to go into in a little bit more detail. Commitment agreements is a product that takes buildings all the way from design through to operation. It actually ties the performance of your design to the operation of your building through a contractual agreement with the Office of Environment and Heritage, which is where the NABERS program sits.

The very first thing that you need to do if you want to enter into a NABERS commitment agreement is actually to model your building as you are expecting it to operate. And the reason we ask you to model it in that way is because we do tie you to a performance requirement at the end of this process.

So if you think that your building is going to be operating for much longer hours than a normal building would operate, we ask you to model your building in that way because it's probably going to change the way that you design for your central plant, for example. So if you have a normal building that operates 9:00 to 5:00, you may design in a particular way, but if you know that you're going to have an anchor tenant that's going to be running in that building for much longer periods, they're going to be there 7:00 to 7:00, or they're going to be there overnight for some reason because they've got international trading floors, you should model that building as you are expecting it to operate. And that is whether you go for a commitment agreement with or without the building code in place.

The second thing that you would do is sign a contractual commitment agreement with the Office of Environment and Heritage. So again, a question that came up in some of the other forums was who was it that actually signs that commitment agreement? It's not the design team, it's not the architect, it's actually the owner of the building that needs to sign that agreement. So there was some concern about whether commitments could be made on behalf of the owner by someone else. It can't be, it is actually the owner of the building that signs that commitment agreement with us. And what that commitment agreement is, is that you commit to targeting a particular rating and that also that you do after a 12 month to 24 month period, actually undertake getting that certified rating as well.

The next thing that you need to do after you've signed your commitment agreement contract is undertake an independent design review. So we have a panel of experts that we have appointed in a number of different sectors, so we have quite a few experts now in the office sector, and what they do is they come in and they peer review the design and the modelling. It's basically a fresh set of eyes just to see if there's anything that you may have missed or if there were things that potentially weren't considered. Again, in some of the other forums, people were asking if you have to take the recommendations of the independent design review onboard. You don't, that's not a requirement of the commitment agreement. All that we ask is that you consider those recommendations and then outline basically why you've decided to not take them on. So it's just a fresh set of eyes coming in that has a lot of experience. The people that we've chosen on our independent design review panel do have a lot of experience taking these buildings from design to construction through a NABERS commitment agreement process. So they just provide that extra level of review.

And then of course, the final step is that you get your NABERS rating certified in operation to meet the level that you have committed to.

So how does it work when we apply it to the building code? So the first step is that you need to sign a commitment agreement with the Office of Environment and Heritage, committing to a 5.5 star level. The next step that you need to do is a calculation outside of our commitment agreement process, which I'm going to go through in a little bit more detail in a moment, which is basically, we’re calling it a base building services check, and those base building services must not be more than 67% of the 5.5 star level. So it sounds a little bit confusing and complicated, but I'm going to break it down. It is actually quite a simple calculation to do. You then need to do a thermal comfort check. I'm not going to go through that in too much detail because Mike's going to explain that part of this process a little bit later. And the same with the additional requirements. There are a few additional requirements that you need to undertake as well if you're going through the NABERS method, and Mike's going to explain those in more detail.

So the first step is that you need to sign a 5.5 star NABERS Energy Commitment Agreement. That's something that you get in touch with us with. We provide you with the contract and then you sign it, quite as a simple process.

The second thing that you need to do after you've signed your 5.5 star NABERS Energy Commitment Agreement, you would have already undertaken your modelling to make sure that you meet your requirement. But what you need to do is basically figure out what the maximum allowance is of energy consumption that you can use and make sure that you're going to be below it. So the 5.5 star rating is actually a band. It goes from just hitting 5 stars, obviously if you get all the way through the band and you're at the other end, you're going to get a 6 star rating.

What this number tells you is that if you're using slightly more than this, you're actually going to get a 5 star rating. So this is the maximum allowable amount for your 5.5 star rating and that's the number that you want to try and determine. When you're doing your NABERS Energy Commitment Agreement, very few buildings will actually design to this maximum allowable amount and that's because you're committing to a performance in operation, and there's all sorts of things that can happen between when you build your initial model all the way through to 12 to 24 months after operation.

So usually design teams allow anywhere between 5 and 25% on this maximum allowable allowance. That depends on the risk appetite of the design team, how many commitment agreement processes you've been through before, how confident you are of what tenants you're going to have, whether you're quite close to the construction stage. There are many factors and we don't specify what your margin needs to be, but we do say, you need to consider what your margin should be and what risks you think are going to occur throughout that process and what your sort of risk appetite is. But anyway, you have this maximum allowable allowance that tells you if you go above that you're no longer going to be achieving your 5.5 star rating. The next step that you need to do is take that initial figure and then do a base building services check. So you need to make sure that your base building energy uses for particular services is no more than 67% of your 5.5 star figure.

So you have this maximum allowable allowance and that covers many items for your base building energy rating. So things like your air conditioning, heating, ventilation, common area lighting, lifts, car parks, external lighting, so for all of those people that know and love NABERS, you will be well-versed with this list.

For the check that you need to do in the NCC, you actually remove some of these items because they are going to be checked again elsewhere. So for this particular check, you need to get rid of car park energy, external lighting energy and any energy associated with tenant supplementary systems. And for the rest of the items, those are the ones that can be no more than 67% of the maximum allowance. So again, just to reiterate, it's not that those other items aren't being checked, they're actually being checked elsewhere, so I'm going to go through that in a minute. For this particular check, you're only looking at these particular items... Oh sorry, all of the items that are not car parks external lighting and tenant supplementary systems that would normally be covered under a NABERS based building energy rating and you want to make sure that they’re no more than 67% of your maximum allowance.

So in this particular example, and these are just made up numbers for, as you can see, one, two, three Example Street in Sydney. In this particular example, you would want those particular services to use no more than 40 kilowatt hours per metre squared and then you know that you're meeting your requirement under the NCC. So not too complicated a calculation that you need to do on top of your energy model, which you already would have done the calculations for and you would have already separated out all of these particular items in your model anyway.

The next step, like I said, which I'm not going to go into too much detail because Mike's going to talk about it, is that you need to do a thermal comfort check. We think that this is a really great addition to the NCC and it's really great to have this added to the commitment agreement process. We think that it adds really like a great check to make sure that buildings aren't being run at 14 degrees in winter to achieve the 5.5 star rating. You won't be able to do this when you do the thermal comfort check as well.

The last step is that you need to meet the general requirements. And there are a few additional specific JV1 requirements, which are those items that we removed previously. So the car park, the tenant lighting and the supplementary systems are going to be done through this separate check, which Mike's going to talk about. Essentially what it's saying is make sure that these meet DTS requirements, is what this is saying.

So Taryn is going to go through this in more detail in a moment from what I understand, but just like Mike was saying, we're not the certifiers, we're just a body that provides you a pathway to be able to get certification. So this slide basically takes you through the kinds of things that your certifier is likely to want to be able to see when you're planning to use this method.

So the very first thing that you would give them is evidence that you actually have undertaken this commitment agreement process. So what you would do is probably just copy a few relevant pages out of your commitment agreement contract and include them within your report to the building certifier. Then you would pull out this section showing that you have met the base building services check, so you can probably provide them with your Commitment Agreement Energy Report. And then with an extra set of calculations, just showing them that you've done this check as well and it might already be included within your report.

Then a section showing them how you've met your thermal comfort requirements and then finally a section addressing those additional requirements, basically showing that those additional services are meeting the DTS requirements.

And yeah, that's the end. I just wanted to reiterate that we are going to be launching the commitment agreement product in a number of other sectors; hotels, shopping centres and data centres later this year, so there will be the opportunity in the future to be able to use this method for other sectors of buildings, but for the moment it is for office buildings that you can use this method for.

Thanks very much. Obviously, I'm also not Carlos.

Oh yes, introducing Taryn Cornell from the Green Building Council.

Taryn Cornell:

That's me. Hi everyone. Good morning. Thanks all for being here this morning. It's great to see you're all still with us. We are on the home stretch now though, so bear with us and we will get through it and get you onto the rest of your day.

But I also wanted to reiterate, we're really excited at the Green Building Council to be here as a pathway for demonstrating compliance in Section J, so really huge thanks to the ABCB and also to the PCA for having us here today.

I'm going to do a poll as well. Who's familiar with the Green Building Council? Most of you, that's great. And what about Green Star? Excellent. Well, just a brief introduction for those of you who aren't familiar. The GBCA or the Green Building Council of Australia, we are a member based organisation dedicated to the transformation of the built environment. We create market based solutions that empower industry to embrace sustainable practices and we've got a really strong focus on carbon emissions currently. We've got three primary functions and that's to rate, to educate and to advocate, and so the Green Star rating system is what we do in terms of the rating.

There are four major rating tools they’re for communities, Design & As Built, interiors and performance. These set the best practice standard for Australia, so while we've got the building code here to set the minimum practice, the Green Star is about setting best practice and beyond.

The JV2 method or the JV2 pathway is embedded in the Design & As Built rating tool, which is the rating tool for new builds and major refurbs. So Design & As Built is a holistic rating tool. So in contrast to NABERS, it's not a sector specific rating tool or a carbon specific rating tool. It is about demonstrating holistic sustainability measures across a number of different categories. So we've got the nine different categories up here.

The energy category is where you'll find the way to demonstrate your JV2 through greenhouse gas emissions reduction. And so we just, I guess the point here is that greenhouse gas emissions reduction is just one part of the rating tool.

In order to pursue JV2, you'd need to select the reference building pathway. It works in a really similar way to JV3, which is to have a NCC compliant building or essentially just a reference building, which is based largely on DTS. You then compare that to your proposed building, but we've got a couple of extra steps in Green Star and that is to first create what's called a benchmark building. And so that benchmark building is a 10% reduction on your greenhouse gas emissions of your NCC or your reference building, your NCC compliant building.

You then need to demonstrate that you sit somewhere on a scale between that benchmark building on a scale of a zero to 100% improvement. So if you are pursuing JV2, what you need to do is be at minimum of 10% and beyond. Now it's worth noting here that obviously if you're pursuing Green Star, if you sit at that 10% improvement point, you're not going to score any points in this category and it's quite a heavily weighted category in terms of points.

So the ambition for projects pursuing Green Star is to sit much further than that 10%. They typically sit somewhere between say a 40 and a 60% improvement above that 10% benchmark building. We also have in Green Star an intermediate building and that's a separate model that we create, which looks specifically at the improvement on your façade against the DTS façade provisions. It doesn't specifically relate to JV2, you'll see that in a moment, but it's just an extra step that we have in Green Star as a way to accumulate points.

So put really simply, the JV2 method is a way for you to demonstrate compliance with JP1 using the Green Star Design & As Built modelling protocol. So under NCC 2016, what you used to have to do is create a series of modelling for your Green Star compliance, which you'd then put into your submission, which would contribute to your certification. And then you'd also have a set of modelling that you would create specifically for your JV3, which you would then give to your building certifier to demonstrate compliance with Section J. Under the NCC 2019 however, you're able to use that same set of modelling protocol from Green Star and apply that to your Section J certification.

So reiterating here, the Green Building Council is not becoming a certifying authority. We will stick to what we know and love, which is Green Star and we will leave the certification to the building certifiers. It's simply just a way to simplify the amount of documentation that's required, and also streamline the process to certification both for Green Star and for Section J.

So to pursue JV2 you would need to register your project for Green Star, then you would create your performance solution. When you register for Green Star, that is usually done by the asset owner. And as I mentioned earlier, you are committing to pursuing points and getting accreditation or a rating for that whole of building model that we have. So those nine categories that I showed before, you're looking to accumulate points across all of that.

But in terms of JV2, you're just demonstrating that you've committed to that. Then you would create your performance solution. You then also go on to produce your energy model and the reporting that comes out of that energy model. And that's when the process splits. So you would provide that information out of that energy modelling report to your certifier. You would also put that into the calculator in Green Star and that's how you achieve points in your Green Star model.

The JV2 performance solution itself is essentially demonstrating that you've got the greenhouse gas emissions reduction being more than 10%, so sitting somewhere above that benchmark building. You then also have to demonstrate that you've got your thermal comfort check, which is you're having a PMV of between minus one to plus one for 95% of the time... Sorry, 95% of the area, 98% of the time. Michael will talk to that a little bit further.

And then you also need to demonstrate that it meets the additional requirements under JVA and JVB. The modelling process itself, you would use the Green Star method, the reference methodology to create your reference building. You then obviously calculate the greenhouse gas emissions for the proposed building with its proposed services, and then you demonstrate that that proposed building is at least 10% better, so sitting at that benchmark or beyond.

Just back on that, sorry, that greenhouse gas consumption and... Sorry, the energy consumption greenhouse gas emissions guide, we refer to that as a calculated guide. It is available for download on our website currently. A lot of you who are used to the Green Star methodology are probably quite familiar with it. It is going to be updated soon in response to Section J, so stay tuned for those updates.

The documentation required for JV2. As we mentioned, you've got that one single energy modelling report that you rely on. You need to demonstrate that you've met the Green Star Design & As Built submission guidelines and the information that's in the calculator guider.

The designer and As Built submission guidelines is basically just saying that you're using the correct pathway, so are you pursuing the reference building pathway? Confusingly, we also recognise NABERS commitment agreements in Green Star, so if you're using JV1, you can get recognised for that in Green Star. But if you want to pursue JV2 because you're doing energy modelling specifically related to Green Star, that's the pathway that you'll use. So hopefully that's not confusing you all too much.

You need to also demonstrate that your report content meets the calculator guide requirements. You would need to have a copy of the Green Star registration email, so basically demonstrating to your certifier that you have registered and committed to that Green Star commitment certification. And also you would need to comply with those additional DTS requirements.

The energy report content itself has the scope of the solution and the approach that you've taken. It's got an overview of the emissions and the thermal comfort modelling that you've taken. There's obviously the comparison between the reference building and the proposed building for your greenhouse gas emissions. And then also a summary of your thermal comfort modelling, which is the PMV.

A fact sheet of this whole process will be available through the ABCB. I think it's yet to be published, but Mike will talk maybe a little bit further about the reference materials available to you.

Finally, Green Star Design & As Built, we have a version 1.3 that will be released specifically to respond to the changes that are happening in Section J. So it's going to come out in mid June. It is only for projects that are using NCC 2019 and beyond.

Okay. So a few things that have changed, we have added some additional prescriptive measures to that reference building pathway. They have nothing to do specifically with JV2, however, because we recognise that that reference building under NCC 2016 is substantially more difficult under 2019, we are allowing projects to pursue additional initiatives to gain additional points.

And that's also pointing us in the direction towards the future focus rating tool, which is a wholesale upgrade of Design & As Built and the rating tool system. So it's indicating the direction that we see the rating tool going.

We've also increased points for the use of green power, so we're really trying to encourage projects to pursue the use of green power. As I mentioned, we've got some minor updates to the calculator guide. Now those are in relation to the assessment methods that have been outlined in the DTS provisions and a few other things just to tighten up in respect to how the code has changed and the way in which the code has changed.

We've also got innovation points for early adoption of NCC 2019, so if you are committing to using the NCC Section J before the end of that transition phase, then we will reward you with innovation points. We're also looking at a change in improvement for that intermediate building itself, so the intermediate building currently has a scale of zero to 20% improvement and we're looking at changing that just in respect to the fact that the way in which the façade is calculated and the changes to the façade have dramatically increased and improved under Section J 2019.

What stays the same? We have the modelling framework and the scale for improvement on the actual reference building, that all stays the same and also the documentation requirements and the certification process. So I suppose what I'm saying here is that largely that reference building pathway is staying primarily quite similar. We're just teasing around the edges and that is all happening in response to the great stuff that is happening in Section J. So, thank you so much for having me. I'm going to hand back to Mike now.

Mike Dodd:

Thank you Taryn. So I'm going to talk briefly. We're getting towards the end of the session now, just on the main changes to JV3 verification using a reference building, and I'll also touch briefly on the introduction of a blower door test verification method to show compliance with the building sealing requirements of Section J.

I guess the main thing about the changes we've made to JV3 is that the overall structure of creating a reference building based on the Deemed-to-Satisfy Provisions, the cookbook building and comparing your proposed building to that and showing that it's more efficient remains the same within JV3. So just maybe a quick show of hands, how many of you are using JV3 commonly in your..?

A fair few of the people here, so it'll be familiar. So the general structure of how you use JV3 is unchanged. And what's also unchanged is you can use JV3 to show compliance just for your façade elements as it's commonly done, a design approval and then services will comply with DTS or you can use JV3 for both façade and services.

So the general structure is the same, but there are a few key points of difference from 2016 to 2019 that I'll go through now. So the first key point of difference is that the point of comparison has changed to greenhouse gas emissions. Previously it was an energy comparison between reference and proposed, now it's a greenhouse comparison. We've done this, one because aligns better with the objective of Section J, which is if you remember right back to the start, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also allows a better reconciliation between use of gas and electricity within your building and it aligns also with NABERS and Green Star, so that's big change number one.

Big change number two is the change to how we define the offset you get for the use of renewable energy onsite. When we were undertaking our consultation around Section J, concerns were raised with us around the use of onsite renewable energy generation to offset the performance of your proposed building so that overall it was more efficient than the reference building. The concern raised was that this was being used to justify poor performing facades within construction. What we've done is change the definition or made it more explicit that you can only get the credit for renewable energy which is generated and used onsite as part of your offset. So energy which is exported to the grid can no longer be counted to decrease the energy consumption of your proposed building.

And we think that with a combination of the increase in the DTS services and an increase in the DTS façade mean that the risk of a building being able to use purely renewable energy to offset its, I guess, façade performance is going to be very, very small, and the other thing that is guarding against that is the introduction of the comfort requirement, which I'll go into a bit more detail in a sec.

We are interested in keeping eye on this though going forward. Recognising that onsite renewable energy is one of the most cost effective ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions within the building, so we do want to retain a pathway for its use within buildings, but we want to make sure we’re getting the balance right.

Okay. So the comfort requirements. This is one of the big changes to Section J. It's consistent across J1, J2 and J3, and essentially it's based around the predicted mean vote framework, which is outlined in ASHRAE 55. So essentially there's six factors within the predicted mean vote framework, four of those are things that you would be using as part of your energy model or the inputs or outputs of your energy model. And those are things like humidity, ready and temperature, air temperature and air speed are all things that are going to be the inputs or outputs of your energy model that you have to do for JV3, or JV1, or JV2, and then you'll specify metabolic rate and clothing level.

So these again, they're outlined in ASHRAE 55 about the choices you make around that and they should be consistent with the expected use of the building. So if it is a hospital and you've got lots of people running around in scrubs and being very, very active, then you set your clothing levels and metabolic rate to be consistent with that. If it's an office building where you've got very, very important men in suits or very, very important women in suits, then you would set your clothing level appropriately. There's guidelines within ASHRAE 55 about how you should do that, you should follow that process.

Again, this guards against poor performing facades, the use of renewable energy onsite to create a building, which is purely par... If you have a paper-thin façade and renewable energy, you're not going to meet your comfort requirements going forward. So essentially this is again, is to meet that performance requirement that we have in place, which is buildings need to be energy efficient, but not at the expense of human comfort. Buildings are designed for the people within them.

Okay. Just a bit further on comfort, we recognize that PMV is not the best measure necessarily if you have a mixed mode or naturally ventilated building. And we're developing a performance-based design solution for the use of the adaptive thermal comfort model, again within ASHRAE 55, and we'd recommend that if you are using JV3, or JV1, or JV2, but your building is mixed mode or naturally ventilated, don't use PMV, use the adaptive thermal comfort model instead. It has a wider, wider range of...It suits that type of building much better. Just a note on PMV of plus one or minus one, that roughly equates to 75% of people saying that they're comfortable. So we're saying that 75% of people in the building need to be comfortable most of the time.

Okay. So in relation to what's actually changed within how you model a building, so with how you model your reference building, how you model your proposed building going forward, there are a few things that we have tweaked or tightened up and these are now specified in JVA and JVB.

So previously, for those who are familiar with JV3, there was a whole lot of detail within JV3 itself about how you do reference modelling and then specification JV, which was all of your schedules, turning on times, turning off times. There's now three specifications and with the first one being JVA, which are all of those things, which I mentioned earlier in response to the question, which your energy model is assuming is being done in terms of the construction process, which it relies upon for your energy model to be correct.

So this is that your insulation is being installed correctly, that you've done your thermal bridging calculations when you're working at how much insulation you're putting in and if you need a thermal break or not. It's the lighting control specifications, so your lights are turning off and on at the right time, or your air conditioning or HVAC controls specifications, which are detailed in J5.4, I think... No, 5.3. But all of those things that your energy model is assuming that is going on, you now have to separately show compliance under JVA that these are actually being done, and we're doing that essentially to try and make energy models better predictors of actual energy use.

In terms of changes to JVB, there are a few things that we've tweaked there, the two things that I've highlighted there on the screen are we now have a tighter temperature range of 20 to 24 degrees. It used to be 20 to 26 or 18 to 26 and air changes have been made from 0.7 to 0.35 in terms of the assumptions of your energy model makes.

Again, we think that is better reflective of how a building is actually going to be operated and should produce a more accurate energy model going forward. So all the changes we've made there, we're trying to increase the accuracy of modelling. There's also, just to highlight the way that your model services going forward in JV3 is a lot more detailed in terms of chiller start up times and so forth. Again, it's to really increase the accuracy of models.

Okay. Just in terms of one final thing on modelling. And so we've talked about NABERS and Green Star already, what we've now said explicitly within JV3, and this is something you could have done previously as a performance solution, is that if you want to use the NABERS scheduling, the NABERS parameters or the Green Star modelling parameters within your JV3 model, you can. And this is essentially to save documentation, save time, not to have to repeat energy models after you've done your initial JV3. So especially if you're using JV3 for your design approval, but you know you want to get Green Star points down the track or certify with Green Star Design & As Built or undertake a NABERS commitment agreement. You can now use the NABERS or Green Star parameters within your JV3 modelling, so you don't have to slightly tweak the model down the track going forward. So it's saying, NABERS equals Green Star equals JV3 essentially. Okay. So that's all the changes for JV3 I wanted to highlight.

Just to talk quickly about JV4, which is a verification method for building sealing, so it shows how you may comply with Part JP1E, which is around building sealing. It's only for that part. This is not a whole of building verification method such as JV1, 2 or 3. It essentially says that if you are going to undertake a blower door test, you should do it in accordance with the standard ISO 9972 and you should hit these numbers in these climate zones depending on the building type. So these are all in the code. All of the slides today will be shared with you once we finish the last presentation up in Perth next week.

But essentially, JV4 is the parameters around undertaking a blower door test and the results that your blower door test should be producing. There are different parameters based on whether or not the building is a daytime operating building or a building that runs overnight and depends on climate zones. If you look closely at those numbers, you'll see that there aren't numbers in there for climate zones for daytime operating buildings. That's essentially because we haven't got the evidence to show that tightly sealed buildings in those climate zones that are only operating during the day are actually more energy efficient. So it's something we were surprised about, but we did find when we ran the numbers and then verified the numbers and then triple checked them that in mild climate zones such as here in Sydney or up in Southeast Queensland you're not necessarily getting a huge benefit from sealing your building up tightly if it's not being run properly. Okay.

I want to talk just briefly now that we’ve finished the content, about things that you can expect coming out of the ABCB going forward. So we've touched on a lot of these today, so we have a number of calculators that we're either updating or releasing. So we talked about the façade calculator or to give it its full title, the J1.5 wall and glazing calculator. There's also an update for the lighting calculator and we have a fan and pumps calculator for services engineers, so it shows compliance for either via Method 1 or Method 2. Now there’ll be a number of worked examples for each of those calculators and some short video clips to go along with those as well.

I direct you towards the update we're doing to the handbook to Section J and the guide to Volume One which has a chapter on Section J. These handbooks go into a lot of detail around the intent of a provision and give you some examples of what would be a compliance solution. So it's all the stuff that you can say within the code directly because the code is referenced for regulation, but it's the explanatory test, which for those of you familiar with Volume Two is inserted directly into Volume Two, which isn't in Volume One, but it's a good place to start if you're trying get a handle on what the code is asking you to do.

A number of the performance-based design solutions, so we've mentioned the thermal comfort. We're working on one with the lighting industry about the use of 1680 to increase minimum lux levels and also for those of you in human services, the use of your Uruvent as a certification pathway instead of AHRI.

We mentioned the fact sheets earlier for JV1, JV2, JV3, so going over the same sort of material we presented here today, but also some information about thermal bridging, some comparison tables with typical construction to say if you add 3-R material insulation to a certain construction, it actually only equals 1.2 and a number of case studies that we're producing.

Finally, if you haven't had a look already, I'd urge you to have a look at the digitised version of the National Construction Code. It's available on the ABCB website. The digitised version is designed to allow you to move back and forth really quickly between the provisions, the explanatory text and also to other supporting materials. So within the code you'll see a blue italicised text which refers to a defined term. On the digitised version, you can click on that, it can bring it up in terms of what the definition is, so that's where you see your italicised total R-Value, it'll bring up the definition saying, "Make sure you include your thermal bridging." And also on the sidebar, there'll be materials related to helping you understand. So it's a good resource and it should help you understand and navigate the code more easily going forward.

All of these are expected to be released in the coming months. Please bear with us, we've had a lot of changes to the NCC, not just in energy, but we have new provisions related to condensation, related to fire and so forth. We're getting them out as quickly as we can, we want to make sure that our quality assurance process internally is robust enough that we have materials which are useful and readable. The best way to get notification is to register on the ABCB website and indicate you have an interest in energy efficiency.

Okay. So that's all from me today. Thank you all very much for coming today. We have the chance for more questions.