# Smith Design Engineering Ltd > Smith Design Engineering is a building services engineering consultancy designing mechanical, electrical and public health systems for buildings across the United Kingdom, at RIBA Stages 0 to 7. - Companies House number: SC713846 - Index of this site: https://www.smithde.co.uk/llms.txt - This file is the full text of every indexable page. Figures in the fee estimator are computed and are not reproduced here. ## Services ### BIM and digital delivery https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/digital Revit modelling, clash detection and information management to BS EN ISO 19650 for MEP design and coordination. **What it is** Digital delivery covers the modelling and information management side of MEP design: producing a coordinated Revit model, running clash detection against the other disciplines, and delivering information in the structure and at the level of detail the appointment requires. BS EN ISO 19650 is an information management standard rather than a modelling standard. What it actually asks for is that the information requirements are stated, that responsibility for producing each piece of information is assigned, and that what gets delivered matches what was asked for. **When you need it** Where BIM delivery is a requirement of the appointment, where the project is complex enough that spatial coordination cannot be resolved reliably in two dimensions, or where the client intends to use the model for asset management after handover. ### BIM modelling at every level of detail https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/bim-modelling-lod MEP models produced at the level of information need the stage requires, from LOD 100 massing to LOD 500 as-installed record. **What it is** Level of detail — or, in the language BS EN ISO 19650 actually uses, level of information need — is the answer to how much a model is supposed to contain at any given point. It is the difference between a duct drawn as an indicative route reserving space and a duct carrying its size, material, insulation thickness, pressure class and manufacturer reference. SDE models at whatever level the stage and the appointment require, from indicative space reservation through fully specified technical design to a record model updated with as-installed information. The levels commonly named on UK appointments run roughly as follows. LOD 100 is conceptual: systems shown as symbols or massing, enough to prove space exists. LOD 200 is generic: elements with approximate size, shape and location, suitable for spatial coordination. LOD 300 is specific: accurate size, shape, location and orientation, which is the level most technical design work is delivered at. LOD 400 adds fabrication and installation detail and is normally the contractor's responsibility rather than the designer's. LOD 500 is the verified record of what was actually installed. **When you need it** Whenever the appointment states a BIM deliverable, and — more usefully — whenever the modelling effort has to be agreed before it is spent. Modelling to LOD 400 what the brief only needed at LOD 200 is expensive and slow; modelling to LOD 200 what the contractor was promised at LOD 300 causes an argument at tender. The level is set in the BIM Execution Plan and confirmed against the exchange information requirements, so it is a Stage 1 or 2 conversation rather than a Stage 4 discovery. **Our process** The required level is agreed per element and per stage rather than declared once for the whole model. A plant item and a small power circuit rarely need the same treatment at the same time. Models are checked against the agreed level before each information exchange, so a delivery either meets what was asked for or the shortfall is stated. Clash detection is run continuously through the design stages, not compiled into a report at the end when nothing can be moved. ### BMS and controls design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/bms-and-controls Building management system and controls design, including control philosophy, points schedules and commissioning requirements. **What it is** Controls design defines how the mechanical and electrical plant is operated: what is measured, what is controlled, what the setpoints are, what happens on failure, and what the building operator sees. A controls specification is where a large share of the gap between designed and actual energy performance is either created or closed. Plant that is correctly sized and incorrectly controlled will not deliver its design performance. **When you need it** On any project with more than the simplest plant. Also on existing buildings where energy use is high and the plant is sound — in which case the controls are usually the problem, and re-commissioning is far cheaper than replacement. ### BREEAM MEP design and credit support https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/breeam-mep Building services design and evidence for the BREEAM credits the MEP engineer controls — energy, water, health and wellbeing, and pollution. **What it is** BREEAM assesses a building across a set of categories, and a defined subset of them is decided almost entirely by the building services design. Energy, water, and much of health and wellbeing and pollution sit with the MEP engineer rather than with the architect or the assessor. The credits the MEP design controls or heavily influences include Ene 01 reduction of energy use and carbon emissions, Ene 02 energy monitoring and sub-metering, Ene 04 low carbon design, the Wat credits on consumption, monitoring, leak detection and equipment specification, Hea 02 indoor air quality, and the Pol credits on refrigerant impact, local air quality and surface water run-off. Where SDE is appointed as the licensed BREEAM Assessor, the assessment is run alongside the design. Where an assessor is already appointed by the client, SDE provides the design-team evidence in the form the assessor needs. #### New homes: BREEAM Residential, formerly the Home Quality Mark Housing is assessed under a different BREEAM scheme from the one above, and the name changed recently enough that both are still in use. New-build self-contained homes — houses, and flats within a block — are assessed under BREEAM UK New Construction: Residential, which is what the Home Quality Mark became when BRE brought it into the BREEAM range in April 2025. Existing Home Quality Mark certificates remain valid, and assessments registered before the transition complete under the original framework. The distinction follows building regulations rather than what the building looks like. Anything classified under Part L Volume 1 as a dwelling goes to the residential scheme, which scores each home individually and accounts for the shared areas around it — homes for sale, social housing, private rented and build-to-rent alike. Buildings that accommodate people without providing self-contained homes stay in the non-domestic scheme as BREEAM Multi-residential: hotels, care homes, halls of residence, and anything with shared living space or on-site support. That boundary matters more than it sounds, because it decides which credits exist. The residential scheme scores across cost, wellbeing and environment, and the MEP contribution is the same in substance as it is on a non-domestic building — the energy strategy, the ventilation design and its effect on indoor air quality, water consumption and metering, and the evidence behind all of it. A scheme assessed against the wrong standard is re-registered, not re-scored. **When you need it** At Stage 1 or 2, before the target rating is fixed in a planning condition or a funding agreement. A BREEAM rating chased retrospectively costs more and achieves less, because several of the highest-value credits — Ene 04, Hea 02, the Wat credits — depend on decisions made during concept design, and the pre-assessment that sets a realistic target has to happen before those decisions are closed off. **Our process** #### Pre-assessment An honest credit-by-credit view of what the project can realistically achieve, what each remaining credit costs, and where the cheapest points are. A target set without this is a target set by hope. #### Through design Credits tracked as design decisions are made, with the evidence captured at the point it exists rather than reconstructed at submission. Most lost credits are lost to missing evidence rather than to a failed design. #### At submission The design-stage and post-construction evidence packs, in the assessor's format. ### Building services surveys and compliance https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/surveys-and-compliance Condition surveys, electrical periodic inspection reporting and statutory compliance audits for existing buildings. **What it is** Survey and compliance work establishes what is actually installed in an existing building, what condition it is in, and where it does not meet current requirements. It is the necessary first step on most refurbishment projects, and it is frequently the whole job — a landlord, a fund or an incoming tenant needing to know what they are taking on before they commit to it. **When you need it** Before acquiring or leasing a building, before committing to a refurbishment scope, when plant is approaching end of life and a replacement programme needs to be planned, or when a periodic inspection has returned unsatisfactory results and the remedial scope needs defining. ### COBie data delivery https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/cobie-data-delivery COBie deliverables to BS 1192-4, with asset data structured, populated and validated against the employer information requirements. **What it is** COBie — Construction Operations Building information exchange — is the structured handover of asset data: what was installed, where it is, what system it belongs to, who made it, and what the operator needs in order to maintain it. BS 1192-4 is the UK code of practice for it. It is a data deliverable rather than a drawing deliverable, and it fails for data reasons. The common failure is not a missing model but an incomplete or inconsistent one: spaces not named to the client's own convention, systems not classified, types duplicated because two people named the same air handling unit differently, or fields populated with a placeholder that survives to handover. **When you need it** Where COBie is named in the employer information requirements — which on public sector work, higher education, healthcare and large commercial estates it usually is — and on any project where the client intends to load asset data into a CAFM or maintenance system after handover. Worth raising even where it is not required: an asset register produced during design costs far less than one produced by surveying the building afterwards. **Our process** The information requirements are read first, and the required fields are mapped to the model before anything is populated. COBie collected at the end from a model that was not built to produce it is a manual data exercise, and that is where the cost and the errors are. Naming, classification and space data are agreed with the client and the lead consultant early — Uniclass 2015 unless the client's own system takes precedence — because renaming spaces and systems retrospectively invalidates every reference to them. Deliveries are validated before issue rather than after rejection. The design-stage responsibility ends where the contractor's begins: SDE provides the design and type data, and the installed serial numbers, warranty dates and commissioning records come from the contractor. ### Domestic water services design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/water-services-design Domestic water services design with calculated demand, sized storage and generation, and legionella risk designed out at layout stage. **What it is** Water services design covers the supply of wholesome cold water and the generation and distribution of hot water: incoming supply, storage, generation, pipe sizing, and the controls that keep temperatures where they need to be. Temperature control is a safety requirement, not a comfort one. Cold water below 20 °C and hot water stored at 60 °C and distributed to reach 50 °C within a minute at the outlet are the ACOP L8 control measures, and the layout either makes them achievable or it does not. **When you need it** On any new building, any extension that adds sanitary provision, and any refurbishment of an existing water system — particularly where the building has had a legionella risk assessment that identified design issues rather than maintenance ones. ### Drainage design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/drainage-design Above and below ground drainage design to BS EN 12056 and BS EN 752, including stack sizing, gradients and adoption requirements. **What it is** Drainage design covers foul and surface water from the appliance to the point of connection: stack sizing and ventilation above ground, gradients, falls and pipe sizing below ground, and the requirements of whoever will adopt or receive the discharge. Below ground drainage is constrained by levels. Once the finished floor level, the external levels and the invert of the receiving sewer are fixed, the drainage either works by gravity or it does not, and a pumped station is a permanent maintenance and resilience liability. **When you need it** From Stage 2 on any new build or extension, and earlier where the site has a level constraint, a limited discharge rate, or a combined sewer that the receiving authority wants surface water separated from. ### Dynamic thermal modelling and overheating assessment https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/thermal-modelling-and-overheating Dynamic simulation for overheating risk, comfort and energy — TM52, TM59, Approved Document O and TM54 — run while the facade can still change. **What it is** Dynamic thermal modelling simulates a building hour by hour across a weather year, rather than at a single design condition. It is what answers the questions a steady-state calculation cannot: whether the building overheats in summer, how often and by how much, whether a free-running strategy is viable, and what the building is likely to actually consume. The assessment methodology depends on what is being demonstrated. CIBSE TM52 covers free-running non-domestic buildings against adaptive comfort criteria. TM59 covers homes. Approved Document O sets the requirement for overheating mitigation in new residential buildings in England. CIBSE TM54 is the separate methodology for predicting operational energy use, which compliance modelling does not do. **When you need it** At concept, while glazing ratio, orientation, shading and ventilation strategy are all still open. This is the single most common sequencing failure in building services. An overheating assessment run after the facade is fixed can only report the problem, and by then mechanical cooling is usually the only remaining answer — which adds plant, plant space, electrical load and running cost to solve something that a shading decision would have solved for nothing. **Our process** The model is built from the design information with the weather file appropriate to the location and the assessment — a design summer year for overheating risk, a test reference year for energy. Options are then tested against it in the order they can still be changed: form and shading first, then glazing and ventilation, then plant. Where the result is marginal, the sensitivity is stated. A building that passes on one weather file and fails on the next is not a building that passes. ### Electrical services design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/electrical LV distribution, lighting, small power, fire alarm and life safety design to BS 7671:2018+A4:2026 for buildings across the UK. **What it is** Electrical services design covers the distribution of power through a building and the systems that depend on it: incoming supply and LV distribution, small power, lighting and emergency lighting, fire detection and alarm, and the containment that carries all of it. Every electrical design SDE issues is prepared to BS 7671:2018+A4:2026, with calculations for load, cable sizing, volt drop, earth fault loop impedance and discrimination carried out and recorded rather than assumed. **When you need it** As early as Stage 1 on any project where the incoming supply capacity is in question. A supply upgrade from the distribution network operator has a lead time measured in months and occasionally in years, and it is the single most common cause of a services-driven programme delay. Also on any new build, fit-out, refurbishment, change of use, or where an existing installation has reached the point that periodic inspection is recording unsatisfactory results. **Our process** #### Load assessment and supply Maximum demand assessed with diversity applied to the actual load profile. Incoming capacity confirmed against the DNO record early, because this is where programmes are lost. #### Distribution design Board positions, submain routes, cable sizing to BS 7671 with volt drop and earth fault loop impedance calculated, protective device selection and discrimination study. #### Lighting and life safety Lighting design to the illuminance and glare criteria for the task, emergency lighting to BS 5266, and fire detection and alarm to BS 5839-1 with the category agreed with the fire strategy. #### Technical design and site Full drawings, schedules and specification for tender and building warrant, then submittal review, inspection and witnessing through construction and handover. ### Emergency lighting design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/emergency-lighting-design Emergency escape lighting design to BS 5266-1:2025, covering escape routes, open areas, high risk task areas and testing provision. **What it is** Emergency lighting design provides illumination on loss of the normal supply, so that occupants can leave the building safely and any process that is dangerous to stop abruptly can be shut down. BS 5266-1 distinguishes escape route lighting, open area anti-panic lighting and high risk task area lighting, each with its own illuminance and duration requirement. The design also has to make testing possible for the building's whole life, which is a design decision, not a maintenance one. **When you need it** On every building with occupants. Specifically on new build, change of use, alteration to escape routes, and where a fire risk assessment or a periodic test has identified that the existing provision does not meet the standard. ### Fire alarm and detection design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/fire-alarm-design Fire detection and alarm system design to BS 5839-1:2025, with the system category agreed against the fire strategy. **What it is** Fire detection and alarm design determines what is detected, where, how the alarm is raised, and what the system does to other building systems when it operates. The starting point is the system category from BS 5839-1 — L1 to L5 for life protection, P1 and P2 for property protection, M for manual only. The category is a decision that belongs with the fire strategy and the responsible person, not a default the services engineer picks; the design then delivers it. **When you need it** On new build, on change of use, on any alteration that changes the compartmentation or escape strategy, and where a fire risk assessment has identified that the existing system category is not adequate for the use. ### Full BIM services and information management https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/bim-information-management The BS EN ISO 19650 information management role: BIM Execution Plan, information requirements, common data environment, federation and delivery reporting. **What it is** BIM modelling and BIM management are different jobs. Modelling produces the model; management defines what information the project needs, who produces each part of it, when it is exchanged, and how it is checked before it is accepted. BS EN ISO 19650-2 sets out that management function for the delivery phase. In practice it is a small number of documents that have to be real rather than decorative — the exchange information requirements, the BIM Execution Plan, the responsibility matrix, the master information delivery plan — plus a common data environment where information moves through defined states rather than being emailed as attachments. Where SDE is the MEP designer only, this is scoped to the MEP part of it. Where the appointment is broader, the same function can be run across the whole delivery team. **When you need it** Where the appointment requires delivery to BS EN ISO 19650, which on public sector, healthcare, higher education and large commercial work it usually does. Where several parties are modelling and there is no agreed convention between them — the point at which two teams have named the same space differently and neither model can be relied on. Where the client intends to operate the building from the model after handover, in which case the information requirements have to be set at the start, because retrofitting them at Stage 6 means surveying a finished building. And where a project has a BIM Execution Plan that was written to win the job and has not been followed since. That is a common and recoverable position, but it needs someone to hold it. **Our process** The client's exchange information requirements are read first, and where they do not exist they are drafted — a specific, answerable question against each one. "Model to LOD 400" is not an information requirement; "each air handling unit carries manufacturer, model, duty, electrical load and maintenance access clearance by Stage 4" is. The BIM Execution Plan is then written against those requirements rather than from a template, with the responsibility matrix and the master information delivery plan as the operative parts of it. Naming, classification and shared coordinates are agreed before anyone models, because every one of them is expensive to change afterwards and invalidates references when it is. The common data environment is set up with the work-in-progress, shared, published and archive states actually enforced, so the current version of a piece of information is unambiguous. Models are federated and checked on a published cycle — geometry, clash, and information completeness against the requirements. The information check is the one usually missing: a model can be clash-free and still fail delivery because half the assets carry no data. Delivery is reported against the information delivery plan, so what is late is visible while it can still be recovered. ### Gas services design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/gas-services-design Natural gas and LPG installation design — supply capacity, pipe sizing, ventilation and the safety requirements of IGEM standards. **What it is** Gas services design covers the route from the meter to the appliance: incoming supply and meter capacity, pipe sizing and materials, ventilation and flueing of the plant room, and the safety provisions — isolation, detection, purge — that the installation is required to have. The design work is governed by the IGEM technical standards rather than by a single British Standard, and by the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. Installation and commissioning must be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer; design sets what that engineer installs. **When you need it** Where a building has a gas-fired appliance of any size — boilers, direct-fired heaters, commercial catering, laboratory or process gas — and on any project where the existing supply or meter may not have the capacity for a changed load. Also on the way out: Scotland's New Build Heat Standard prohibits direct emissions heating in new buildings applying for a warrant from 1 April 2024, so on a new build in Scotland the honest answer is often that gas is not available for heating, and the design work becomes the electrification route instead. **Our process** Load first, then the supply. The connected load and the diversity applied to it determine whether the existing meter and service will do, and a capacity application to the gas transporter has a lead time that needs to start early rather than at tender. Plant room ventilation and flue routing are resolved with the architect at coordination stage, because both need builder's work and both are difficult to add later. ### Heat pump and low carbon heat design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/heat-pump-design Heat pump design for new build and retrofit — flow temperature and emitter sizing, hot water and legionella control, electrical capacity and acoustics. **What it is** A heat pump is not a boiler swap. It delivers heat at a much lower flow temperature, which changes emitter sizing, pipework, hot water generation and control strategy, and it draws its energy electrically, which changes the incoming supply and the switchgear. The design questions that decide whether the installation works are mostly settled before any plant is selected: what flow temperature the building can actually be heated at, whether the existing emitters can deliver the load at that temperature, how domestic hot water will be generated and kept safe, and whether the site has the electrical capacity. In Scotland the New Build Heat Standard has made this the default rather than the alternative for new buildings, and the same questions now arrive on every project rather than on the ones with an ambitious client. **When you need it** On any new building in Scotland where the building warrant is applied for on or after 1 April 2024, and on any building where the heat source is being replaced. On retrofit, before the plant is ordered. The most expensive heat pump installations are the ones specified as a like-for-like replacement and then discovered, after commissioning, to be unable to heat the building on a cold day at the flow temperature the emitters need. **Our process** #### The building before the plant Heat loss recalculated for the building as it is, not as the old boiler was sized for. Emitter capacity checked at the proposed flow temperature. Where the two do not meet, the options are stated — fabric, emitters, or a higher flow temperature with the efficiency penalty quantified. #### Hot water separately Domestic hot water is a separate problem from space heating and is where most low-temperature systems come unstuck. Storage volume, reheat, and the temperature regime needed for legionella control are designed together, with any supplementary heat identified rather than assumed. #### Then the plant and the site Selection at the design condition rather than at the rating condition, defrost behaviour accounted for, acoustic assessment for the location, and the electrical capacity confirmed against the incoming supply before anything is ordered. ### Heating and cooling design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/heating-and-cooling-design Heating and cooling design — HVAC loads, plant selection and a control philosophy that can be commissioned. **What it is** Heating and cooling design determines how a building is warmed and cooled: the system type, the plant, the distribution, and the control strategy that makes them work together. It is the H and the AC of HVAC — the V is covered separately under ventilation design, and on most projects the two are designed as one system. The system selection is the consequential decision. It sets plant space, riser sizes, incoming supply capacity, maintenance burden and a large share of the building's operational carbon for the next twenty years. SDE appraises options against the brief at concept stage, when changing the answer is still cheap. **When you need it** On any new build, extension, refurbishment or change of use where the existing systems cannot serve the proposed occupancy — and on any project where a Part L or Section 6 compliance route depends on plant efficiency. Also where an existing building overheats, has poor air quality, or has plant that is failing and needs replacing with something that will still be compliant in ten years' time. **Our process** Loads first, then system selection, then plant, then controls — in that order. Selecting plant before the load is calculated is how buildings end up with oversized boilers running at poor part-load efficiency for their entire life. Where the brief allows it, two or three system options are modelled and compared on capital cost, running cost, carbon and space requirement, and the comparison is issued rather than summarised. ### LV distribution design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/lv-distribution-design Low voltage distribution design including maximum demand, cable sizing, volt drop, earth fault loop impedance and discrimination. **What it is** LV distribution design determines how power gets from the incoming supply to every point of use: the boards, the submains, the cable sizes, the protective devices and the way they discriminate. The calculations are the design. Cable sizing to BS 7671 takes account of installation method, grouping, ambient temperature and thermal insulation, then is checked against volt drop and against earth fault loop impedance for disconnection time. A cable that satisfies current-carrying capacity and fails volt drop is not a design. **When you need it** On any new installation, any significant alteration to an existing one, and on any project where the incoming supply capacity or the existing switchgear is being asked to serve a larger load than it was designed for. ### Lighting and emergency lighting design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/lighting-design Interior, exterior and emergency lighting design to BS EN 12464-1:2021 and BS 5266-1:2025, with calculated illuminance, glare and uniformity. **What it is** Lighting design establishes what each space needs to be lit to, and then delivers it: luminaire selection, layout, control, and the calculations that demonstrate the criteria are met. The criteria are not just illuminance. BS EN 12464-1 sets maintained illuminance, uniformity, unified glare rating and colour rendering for the task being performed. A space that meets the lux level and fails the glare rating is uncomfortable to work in, and that shows up as a complaint rather than as a compliance failure. Emergency lighting is designed alongside it rather than added afterwards — escape routes, open areas and high risk task areas to BS 5266-1:2025, using the same luminaire layout where a combined fitting will do the job. It has its own page, covering the design in detail. **When you need it** On any new build or fit-out, on any refurbishment where the lighting is being replaced, and on any project with a Part L or Section 6 requirement where lighting efficacy and controls contribute to the compliance calculation. ### M&E dilapidations surveys https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/dilapidations Mechanical and electrical input to schedules of dilapidations, for landlords and tenants — what the lease actually requires, costed, and defensible. **What it is** Dilapidations is the process of establishing what a tenant owes at the end of a lease for the condition of the premises. The mechanical and electrical element is frequently the largest single line in the schedule and the least well evidenced on both sides. The work is to establish three things: what the lease and any schedule of condition actually require, what state the services are genuinely in, and what it would cost to put right only what is owed. That last distinction is where most of the money is. A claim written from a wish list rather than from the lease does not survive scrutiny, and a response that concedes items outside the repairing obligation pays for someone else's upgrade. **When you need it** For a landlord, before serving a terminal schedule — and ideally at the interim stage, while the tenant still has time to comply rather than to negotiate. For a tenant, as early as possible before lease expiry or break. Break clauses conditional on the state of the premises are unforgiving, and the M&E items — plant condition, statutory testing records, missing O&M information, alterations never reinstated — are the ones that take longest to put right. **Our process** The lease, licences for alterations and any schedule of condition are read first, because they define the obligation and nothing else does. The services are then surveyed against that obligation rather than against current standards, since a tenant is not generally liable to upgrade an installation that was compliant when it was installed. Each item is recorded with its evidence, the clause it arises under, and a cost. Items that are arguable are marked as arguable rather than presented as settled — a schedule where every line is contested loses the ones that were sound. ### MEP coordination workshops https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/mep-coordination-workshops Chaired workshops that resolve MEP clashes against the architectural and structural models, with every decision recorded, assigned and closed out. **What it is** A coordination workshop is a working session, not a review meeting. The federated model is open, the disciplines are in the room, and the clashes are worked through and resolved while the people who can agree the resolution are present. Clash detection software produces a list. It does not decide which service moves, whether a beam can be penetrated, or whether the ceiling void is deep enough to take a duct over a drainage run at the fall it needs. Those are engineering decisions with cost and buildability consequences, and they are made faster and better by people looking at the same model at the same time than by a fortnight of comments passed between offices. The other half of the job is what happens after the session: every resolution is recorded against the clash it settles, assigned to whoever has to change their model, and checked at the next run. A clash report with no closing-out mechanism produces the same list next month. **When you need it** On any project where services are tight against structure — plant rooms, ceiling voids under downstand beams, risers, basement car parks and refurbishments of existing buildings, where the structure is already there and cannot move. Also where the design is being produced by more than one party. A single consultant coordinating their own disciplines can do much of this internally; a project with a separate architect, structural engineer, specialist installers and a contractor's design portion cannot, because no one holds the whole model. The stages that benefit most are the end of Stage 3 and through Stage 4, when the design is developed enough for a clash to be real and not yet so fixed that resolving it is expensive. **Our process** The models are federated and a clash test set is agreed before the session, with tolerances that reflect what actually matters — a 10 mm overlap between a pipe and a ceiling zone is noise, a duct through a beam is not. Running every discipline against every other at zero tolerance produces thousands of results and hides the twenty that would stop the job. Sessions are chaired and time-boxed, working through clashes grouped by area rather than by number, so decisions about one plant room are made together instead of scattered across a list. Every resolution is recorded with the clash reference, the decision, the party responsible for the model change, and the date it is due. The next run reports on closure as well as on new clashes, which is what makes the trend visible. Where a clash cannot be resolved within the current design — insufficient ceiling void, a riser too small for the risers it has to carry — it is escalated as a design issue with the options and their consequences, rather than left open in a report. ### Mechanical services design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/mechanical Heating, ventilation, cooling and controls design for commercial, retail, education and industrial buildings across the UK. **What it is** Mechanical services design covers the systems that keep a building warm, cool, and supplied with fresh air: heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration and the controls that operate them. SDE designs mechanical services at RIBA Stages 0 to 7, from the first capacity check against an incoming supply through to witnessing and handover on site. Loads are calculated rather than assumed, and plant is sized to the calculated demand instead of to a factor stacked on a factor. The mechanical design is coordinated in-house with the electrical and public health design, so services are resolved against each other before drawings are issued rather than after the contractor finds the clash. **When you need it** You need a mechanical services designer as soon as the building's use, area or occupancy is settled enough to calculate a load — usually RIBA Stage 1 or 2. Appointing at that point matters because the two decisions with the largest downstream cost, plant space and incoming supply capacity, are effectively fixed by the end of Stage 2. Changing either after spatial coordination has started is expensive. Common triggers: a new build or extension; a change of use that alters occupancy or ventilation requirement; plant reaching end of life; an overheating problem that has not responded to controls changes; or a Part L or Section 6 compliance shortfall found at design stage. **Our process** #### Stage 1 — Load and capacity Heat loss and heat gain calculated for the building as designed, not from a rule of thumb per square metre. Incoming gas and electrical capacity checked against the calculated demand early, because a supply upgrade has a lead time measured in months. #### Stage 2 — Strategy and plant space System selection, plant room sizing, riser and distribution strategy. This is where the options appraisal happens — the point at which the design still has the freedom for it to be worth doing. #### Stage 3 — Spatial coordination Services routed and coordinated against structure and the other disciplines. Builder's work openings identified and issued. #### Stage 4 — Technical design Full calculations, equipment schedules, control philosophies and drawings to a standard that can be tendered and submitted for building warrant or Building Regulations approval. #### Stages 5 to 7 Contractor submittal review, site queries, witnessing, commissioning records and as-fitted information. ### Net zero and energy strategy https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/net-zero-and-energy-strategy Energy strategy for planning and for real performance — the hierarchy, the options appraisal, and the gap between the compliance model and the meter. **What it is** An energy strategy sets out how a building will meet its energy and carbon obligations, in the order the decisions have to be made: reduce demand, then supply it efficiently, then supply what remains from low carbon sources, then verify the result. For most projects it is a planning document before it is an engineering one. Local plan policy, and in London the energy and cooling hierarchies, require the strategy to be submitted with the application — which means it is written early, and then commits the detailed design that follows. The part that is usually missing is the last one. A compliance model is not a prediction of energy use, and a strategy built only on compliance modelling tells a client nothing about what the building will cost to run. **When you need it** Before the planning application, and before any carbon or running-cost target is committed to contractually. Also whenever an existing estate needs a decarbonisation plan: what to replace, in what order, and what has to be done to the building before the plant change is worth making. **Our process** #### Demand first Fabric, glazing, shading, ventilation strategy and controls, because every kilowatt removed here is a kilowatt of plant, plant space and electrical capacity that does not have to be provided or paid for. #### Then supply Options appraised on capital cost, running cost, carbon and space — all four, stated separately, rather than collapsed into a single recommendation. #### Then verification Predicted operational energy to CIBSE TM54 alongside the compliance figure, with the difference between them explained rather than hidden. Metering strategy designed so the prediction can actually be tested once the building is in use. ### Non-domestic EPCs and energy assessment https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/epc-non-domestic Level 3, 4 and 5 non-domestic EPCs, lodged by an accredited assessor, with the recommendation report and the Scottish Section 63 action plan where it applies. **What it is** A non-domestic Energy Performance Certificate rates a building's asset performance on a standard basis so that two buildings can be compared. It is required when a building is constructed, sold or let, and it is produced from the same National Calculation Methodology engine as Part L and Section 6 compliance — but it is a different output, produced at a different point, and one does not substitute for the other. Assessments are carried out at Level 3, 4 or 5 depending on the complexity of the building and its services, and must be lodged on the national register by an assessor accredited at the appropriate level. SDE carries out and lodges the assessment. In Scotland, buildings over 1,000 m² additionally trigger the Section 63 regime on sale or lease, which requires an action plan setting out the improvement measures to be carried out. **When you need it** On construction, before the building is occupied; on sale or lease of an existing building; and where a lease renewal brings a property into scope of minimum energy efficiency requirements. Worth commissioning early on a refurbishment: an EPC produced before design decisions are made will show which measures actually move the rating, and which are expensive and change nothing. **Our process** The assessment level is confirmed first, because it determines both the method and the cost, and an assessment produced at the wrong level has to be redone. The building is then surveyed or modelled from the design information, the certificate and recommendation report are produced, and the certificate is lodged on the register. Where the rating matters commercially — a letting threshold, a funding condition — the model is used to test improvement options before the certificate is lodged rather than after. ### Part L compliance modelling, England and Wales https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/sbem-part-l Non-domestic Part L compliance modelling and BRUKL reporting at design and as-built stage, run early enough to change the design rather than to report on it. **What it is** Part L of the Approved Documents covers conservation of fuel and power. For a non-domestic building, compliance is demonstrated by modelling the building against a notional equivalent under the National Calculation Methodology, in SBEM or in an approved dynamic simulation model. The output is the BRUKL report — Building Regulations UK Part L — which sets out the building's calculated emission rate and primary energy rate against their targets, together with the minimum fabric and services standards the design has to meet regardless of the overall result. Compliance is demonstrated twice: once at design stage, and again as built, with the commissioning and air permeability evidence to support it. **When you need it** At Stage 2 or 3 for the design-stage submission, and again before completion for the as-built report. The second one is where projects come unstuck. The design-stage BRUKL commits the building to a set of specific efficiencies, specific fan powers, control functions and an air permeability figure. If any of them is substituted on site without being re-checked, the as-built model fails and the building cannot be signed off until it is resolved — usually at the least convenient moment in the programme. **Our process** #### Design stage Model built while the fabric, glazing and heat source are still open, run against the options, and issued with a written schedule of what it commits the design to. #### Through construction Contractor substitutions checked against that schedule as they are proposed rather than as they are discovered. A pump or an AHU with a different specific fan power is a compliance question, not just a procurement one. #### As built As-built model updated to the installed equipment, with commissioning records and the air permeability test result, and the as-built BRUKL issued for completion. ### Passivhaus building services design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/passivhaus-design Building services design for Passivhaus certification, including PHPP input, ventilation strategy and the low-load plant selection it requires. **What it is** Passivhaus is a performance standard verified by calculation in the Passivhaus Planning Package and by measured airtightness on site. For building services, it changes the problem rather than removing it: heating loads become very small, which makes conventional plant selection and control difficult, and ventilation with heat recovery becomes the primary system rather than a secondary one. The standard is described as building-type agnostic, but its thresholds and default assumptions derive from dwellings in a heating-dominated climate. Applying it to a non-residential building — a school, a hotel, a leisure centre — relocates the difficulty into boundary condition definition and services integration rather than building physics. **When you need it** From Stage 1. Passivhaus is not a specification that can be applied to a design later; the form, fabric, glazing and services strategy have to be developed against the PHPP from the outset. ### Public health engineering https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/public-health Hot and cold water services, above and below ground drainage, gas and rainwater design to CIBSE Guide G and the relevant water byelaws. **What it is** Public health engineering covers the water into a building and everything that leaves it: hot and cold water services, sanitary provision, above ground drainage, below ground drainage, rainwater and attenuation, and gas services. It is the discipline most often treated as an afterthought and the one with the most direct consequences when it is — a legionella risk from a poorly designed hot water system, a drainage layout that cannot achieve fall, or an attenuation requirement discovered after the levels are fixed. At SDE the public health services are delivered by the mechanical team and listed alongside the rest of the mechanical design — domestic water services, drainage and gas each have their own page. This page covers the discipline itself: the compliance regimes those three sit inside, and the decisions that have to be made before any of them can be sized. **When you need it** From Stage 2, alongside the mechanical and electrical design. Below ground drainage and attenuation in particular need to be resolved while site levels are still adjustable, because a drainage run that cannot achieve gravity fall becomes a pumped solution with a maintenance liability attached. **Our process** Cold water demand calculated by loading units, storage sized against the demand profile and the risk of stagnation, and hot water generation selected against the same. Pipe sizing calculated rather than defaulted. Above ground drainage designed to BS EN 12056 with stack sizing and ventilation checked. Below ground drainage designed to gradient and to the receiving authority's requirements, with attenuation sized where the discharge rate is limited. Legionella risk is designed out at the layout stage — dead legs, oversized storage and long branch runs are cheaper to remove on a drawing than to manage for the life of the building. ### Revit MEP modelling, RIBA Stages 0 to 7 https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/revit-mep-modelling Revit MEP modelling through every RIBA stage — concept space reservation, spatial coordination, technical design and record model. **What it is** Revit is the authoring tool SDE models MEP services in, and the model is carried through the whole appointment rather than built once for a deliverable and abandoned. What the model is for changes at every stage, and that is the point. At Stage 2 it reserves space and proves the plant fits. At Stage 3 it resolves services against structure and architecture. At Stage 4 it carries the sizes, schedules and specification that the drawings and the tender are produced from. At Stages 5 to 7 it absorbs contractor information and becomes the record. **When you need it** On any project where the design will be coordinated in three dimensions, where the client or the lead consultant is working in Revit, or where the appointment requires model deliverables at defined exchanges. Also on projects where it is not contractually required but the building is congested — a plant room, a laboratory, a refurbishment with a fixed ceiling void — because the coordination is faster to do in the model than to discover on site. **Our process** Stage 0 and 1: no model. Loads, capacities and space requirements are established first, because modelling a system before its load is known is modelling the wrong system accurately. Stage 2: systems and plant placed to prove space, risers and plant room sizes, against the architect's model. Stage 3: spatial coordination. Services routed and resolved against structure and architecture, clashes run and cleared, builder's work openings agreed and issued. Stage 4: technical design. Sizes, materials, insulation, schedules and specification carried in the model, with drawings produced from it rather than alongside it. Stages 5 to 7: contractor submittals reviewed against the model, and the record model updated with as-installed information for handover. ### Section 6 energy compliance, Scotland https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/sbem-section-6 SBEM and dynamic simulation modelling for Section 6 compliance in Scotland, produced as part of the building warrant application rather than after it. **What it is** Section 6 is the energy section of the Scottish Technical Handbooks, supporting the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004. For a non-domestic building, compliance is demonstrated by calculating the building's emissions and primary energy against a notional building of the same size and shape, using the Scottish National Calculation Methodology. The calculation is run either in SBEM — the Simplified Building Energy Model — or in an approved dynamic simulation model where the building has features SBEM cannot represent. The output is the compliance report that accompanies the building warrant application. SDE produces both the model and the report, and runs the model as a design tool from Stage 2 rather than as a submission exercise at Stage 4. **When you need it** Before the building warrant is applied for, which in Scotland means before work starts — there is no equivalent of the English building notice route, so a model that fails cannot be quietly fixed during construction. In practice that means Stage 2 or early Stage 3. The compliance result is decided by fabric performance, glazing ratio, ventilation strategy and heat source, and all four are effectively fixed by the end of spatial coordination. **Our process** #### While options are open The model is built early and run against each option under consideration. A model that first runs after the design is fixed can only report the answer. A model that runs while the heat source and the glazing ratio are still in play can change it. #### At warrant submission The compliance report, the model file and a written note of exactly what the model commits the design to — flow temperatures, efficiencies, control strategy, air permeability, specific fan powers. Those inputs become obligations on the contractor, and the most common cause of a failed completion is a substitution that nobody checked against them. #### At completion The as-built position is reconciled against the submitted model, with the commissioning and air permeability evidence the verifier expects. ### Security systems design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/security-systems-design Access control, intruder alarm and CCTV design — zoning, containment and interfaces resolved with the fire and escape strategy. **What it is** Security systems design covers access control, intruder detection and video surveillance as one system rather than three separate procurements: what is controlled, what is detected, what is recorded, and how those decisions interact with the way people are meant to leave the building. The interface with life safety is the part that goes wrong. Every access-controlled door on an escape route needs a fail-safe release on fire alarm and a mechanical means of escape that does not depend on the electronic system working. That is a design decision at Stage 3, not a commissioning discovery at Stage 5. **When you need it** On any building with controlled access — offices, schools, banking and retail, laboratories, plant and switch rooms — and on any refurbishment where the door schedule, the escape strategy or the occupier's operating model changes. Also where a system already exists and is being extended: the head end, the credential technology and the cabling standard have to be established before new devices are specified against them. **Our process** Zoning first. Who goes where, at what times, and what happens when the system fails — those three answers set the door schedule, the reader count and the containment. Device selection comes afterwards. Video surveillance is designed against an operational requirement in the terms of BS EN 62676-4: what each camera is for — monitor, detect, observe, recognise, identify — because that determines the pixel density on target, and therefore the lens, the position and the number of cameras. A camera specified without one is a camera that produces footage nobody can use. ### Small power and data design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/small-power-and-data Small power layouts and structured cabling design — final circuits, containment, comms rooms and the loads a fit-out actually draws. **What it is** Small power and data covers everything downstream of the distribution board that a building's occupants actually touch: socket outlets, fused connections to equipment, floor boxes and desk power, structured cabling to Cat 6A or better, comms room and cabinet layouts, and the containment that carries both. It is the discipline where the design has to reflect how the space is used rather than what the drawing shows. A desk layout that changes after handover is normal, so grids, containment capacity and spare ways are designed with headroom rather than to the exact furniture plan issued at Stage 4. **When you need it** On every fit-out and every new build, and on any refurbishment where the layout, the occupancy density or the equipment changes — including the addition of electric vehicle charge points, which fall under Approved Document S in England and Section 7 in Scotland and change the incoming load calculation. **Our process** Loads are established from the equipment schedule and the occupancy, with diversity applied, and reconciled with the LV distribution design rather than assumed to fit within it. Structured cabling is designed to BS EN 50173 and the containment segregation requirements of BS 6701, keeping data separated from power by the required distance. Comms rooms are sized for the cabinets, the patching and the heat they will reject, and that heat load is passed to the mechanical design rather than discovered by the cooling design later. ### Stage 5 contractor design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/stage-5-contractor-design MEP design for contractors and design-and-build appointments: Stage 4 taken to installation information, or the contractor design portion produced outright. **What it is** Stage 5 is manufacturing and construction. The design work in it is the step between a coordinated Stage 4 design and information a subcontractor can order materials and install from: circuit-level electrical design, duct and pipe sizing carried through to the final route, plant selections against real manufacturers' data, builders work, and the drawings that go on site. Two appointments are common. One is a contractor's design portion, where the main contract makes the contractor responsible for designing part of the MEP installation and the design capability has to come from somewhere. The other is a design-and-build project where the contractor has taken on the whole MEP design after novation or from a performance specification. Both are the same engineering problem from a different side of the table: the design has to be buildable, procurable at the price that was tendered, and demonstrably compliant, and the deadline is a construction programme rather than a planning date. **When you need it** When a contractor holds design responsibility under a design-and-build or contractor's design portion arrangement and does not have the in-house discipline cover to discharge it. When a scheme was tendered on a performance specification and now needs a design behind it before anything can be ordered. When a Stage 4 design has been inherited — from a consultant no longer appointed, or from a novation — and it has to be checked, completed and taken to installation information under someone's professional responsibility. And where an installation is already under way and a change on site needs designing and documenting properly rather than being resolved verbally and discovered at handover. **Our process** The design responsibility matrix comes first, because on a Stage 5 appointment the most expensive ambiguity is not technical. BSRIA BG 6 sets out the mechanism: every system, and every element within it, is assigned to a party and a stage before the work starts. Where the matrix is silent, it is agreed and written down rather than assumed. The inherited design is then checked rather than accepted. Anything being carried forward — load calculations, distribution sizing, plant selections — is verified against its own basis, because Stage 5 information issued on an unchecked assumption becomes an installed defect. Design then proceeds to installation level: final circuit design and protective device selection to BS 7671, ductwork and pipework sized on the coordinated route rather than the schematic, plant selected against manufacturers' performance data with the duty confirmed, and builders work openings and structural loadings issued to the parties who need them. Information is issued against the construction programme, in the order the site needs it, with a register showing what has been issued, what is due and what is being held pending a decision. Designer duties under CDM 2015 apply here as they do at any other stage — the residual risks that could not be designed out are recorded and issued with the information, not left to the site to discover. ### Sustainability and net zero design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/sustainability Part L and Section 6 compliance, energy modelling, heat decarbonisation and Passivhaus design for buildings across the UK. **What it is** Sustainability in building services is mostly a set of ordinary engineering decisions made well: load calculated properly rather than padded, systems selected on lifetime performance rather than capital cost, plant sized to demand, and controls that actually deliver the design intent. SDE covers the compliance route — Part L in England and Wales, Section 6 in Scotland — and the work beyond it: options appraisal, heat decarbonisation, overheating assessment and Passivhaus design where the client is pursuing certification. **When you need it** On every project, because Part L and Section 6 compliance is not optional. Earlier than most people expect if the target is anything beyond compliance — a net zero or Passivhaus target set at Stage 3 is a different and more expensive project than the same target set at Stage 1. **Our process** Compliance modelling is run as a design tool during Stages 2 and 3, not as a submission exercise at Stage 4. A model that first runs after the design is fixed can only report the answer; a model that runs while options are open can change it. Where a client is pursuing a target beyond compliance, the gap between the compliance model and the real energy prediction is stated explicitly. Notional-building compliance modelling is not an energy prediction and should never be presented as one. ### TM65 embodied carbon assessment https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/tm65-embodied-carbon Embodied carbon of MEP systems to CIBSE TM65, for whole life carbon assessments and for choosing between plant on more than capital cost. **What it is** CIBSE TM65 is a calculation methodology for the embodied carbon of building services equipment — the carbon in making, transporting, maintaining and disposing of the plant, as distinct from the carbon of running it. It exists because most MEP products have no environmental product declaration. Where a manufacturer has published a verified EPD to BS EN 15804, that figure is used. Where none exists, which is still the common case, TM65 provides a structured estimate from the product's material composition and mass, with an uncertainty factor applied so the answer is honest about being an estimate rather than a measurement. Building services matter here more than their volume suggests. As fabric improves and operational carbon falls, the proportion of a building's whole life carbon sitting in its plant, pipework, ductwork, cabling and replacement cycles rises — and services are replaced several times over a building's life, so the recurring embodied carbon can exceed the initial figure. **When you need it** Where a whole life carbon assessment is required — by planning policy, by a funder, by a BREEAM Mat 01 credit, or by a client target such as the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge or a LETI benchmark — and the MEP contribution has to be quantified rather than excluded with a note. Also on any project where two plant options are close on capital and operational cost. That is the point at which embodied carbon is the deciding factor rather than a reporting exercise, and it has to be assessed while both options are still live. **Our process** Scope first: which systems are included, which life cycle modules are assessed, and what the study is for. An assessment covering only product stage A1 to A3 answers a different question from one covering replacement and end of life, and the two are not comparable. Verified EPD data is used wherever a manufacturer publishes it. Where it does not exist, the TM65 methodology is applied from the product's own material and mass data, with the uncertainty factor stated rather than quietly absorbed into the total. Results are reported per system and per life cycle module, not as a single number. A total tells a client nothing they can act on; a breakdown shows which system, and which decision, is worth revisiting. The assessment is handed over with its assumptions, its data sources and its gaps written down, so it can be updated as the design develops rather than repeated from scratch. ### Utilities and renewables design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/utilities-and-renewables Incoming supply applications, substation and metering requirements, and PV, battery storage and EV charging design and connection. **What it is** Utilities work is the interface between the building and the networks that feed it: the electrical supply capacity application to the distribution network operator, the gas and water connections, the substation or switch room the DNO requires, and the metering arrangement. Renewables sit on the same interface, because generation on site is a connection question as much as a design one. Photovoltaic arrays, battery storage and EV charging all change the site's import and export profile, and anything beyond the smallest installation needs the network operator's agreement before it can be energised. **When you need it** As early as Stage 1 or 2. Utility connection lead times are measured in months, and a diversionary quotation or a new substation can determine both the programme and a significant part of the budget — so a load estimate that supports an application is one of the first useful things a services engineer produces. For renewables, at the point the energy strategy is being written, because whether generation is credited in the Part L or Section 6 calculation depends on it being designed rather than aspirational. **Our process** Estimated maximum demand first, with diversity, then the application. Where the design is still moving, an application is made on a defensible estimate with a stated contingency rather than delayed until the load is certain — the lead time is the constraint, not the accuracy. Generation is sized against the site's own consumption profile rather than against roof area, because export is worth less than displacement and a system designed to fill the roof often spills. Battery storage is sized on the same profile. Connection applications — G98 for the smallest installations, G99 above it — are prepared and tracked with the DNO, and the metering arrangement is confirmed before commissioning is programmed. ### Ventilation design https://www.smithde.co.uk/services/ventilation-design Natural, mechanical and mixed-mode ventilation design to Approved Document F or Technical Handbook Section 3, with calculated rates. **What it is** Ventilation design establishes how a building gets fresh air and removes stale air, moisture and pollutants — by natural means, mechanically, or a combination of the two. Rates are calculated from occupancy, activity and pollutant load rather than taken from a default table, because the default is a floor and not a target. Where a building has a specific requirement — a commercial kitchen, a laboratory, a plant room with a refrigerant leak risk — that requirement drives the design. **When you need it** On every occupied building. Specifically where occupancy is changing, where a space is being converted to a different use, where indoor air quality is a stated requirement of the brief, or where a Part F or Section 3 compliance route must be demonstrated. ## Sectors ### Banking and financial services https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/banking-and-financial-services MEP design for branch networks and financial services offices, with resilience, security integration and out-of-hours delivery. **Overview** Banking premises combine a public-facing retail environment with a secure operational one, and the services have to serve both without compromising either. Branch work is typically a rolling programme rather than a single project, which puts a premium on standard details that survive being applied to buildings of very different age and construction. **Design considerations** #### Resilience is specified, not assumed Continuity requirements for tills, ATMs, communications and security systems are usually defined by the client's operational standard. The services design has to deliver the defined level rather than a general impression of robustness. #### Security integration Intruder alarm, access control, CCTV and the electrical infrastructure that serves them need coordinating with the general installation, including containment segregation and supply resilience. #### Work happens around trading Branch refurbishment is generally out of hours or in short closures, which shapes isolation, temporary supply and commissioning strategy as much as the design itself. ### Commercial offices https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/commercial-offices MEP design for new build and refurbished office buildings, from shell and core through to Cat A and Cat B fit-out. **Overview** Office MEP design divides into shell and core, Cat A and Cat B, and the division matters because it determines who carries the risk of the assumptions. Shell and core sets incoming capacity, plant space and riser provision against an assumed occupancy density. If the eventual tenant density exceeds that assumption, the cost of the shortfall lands on someone — and it is worth being explicit at design stage about what density the building has been designed to. **Design considerations** #### Occupancy density is the driving assumption Everything downstream — fresh air rate, cooling load, small power capacity, sanitary provision — derives from occupancy density. The British Council for Offices guidance gives densities for design purposes, and the figure used should be stated on the drawings rather than buried in a calculation. #### Small power has grown and then shrunk Small power loads per person have fallen substantially as desktop machines gave way to laptops, but the diversity has changed shape rather than simply reduced. Designing to a legacy W/m² figure oversizes the distribution and the cooling that removes the heat from it. #### Flexibility has a cost that should be priced Speculative offices are frequently asked to accommodate any future layout. That is achievable, but it is a decision about capital cost and plant space, not a free property of a good design. ### Education https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/education MEP design for schools, colleges and university buildings, including ventilation, acoustics and laboratory services. **Overview** Education buildings have high, sharply peaked occupancy and low tolerance for services noise, which makes ventilation the central design problem: the rates required by occupancy are substantial, and the acoustic limits mean they cannot simply be met with more air velocity. University buildings add a further layer where laboratories are involved, with containment, fume extract and resilience requirements that do not appear in general teaching space. **Design considerations** #### Ventilation against acoustics Teaching spaces need high fresh air rates and low background noise at the same time. Meeting both means larger ducts, lower velocities and attenuation designed in from concept, not added when a test fails. #### Occupancy is peaked and predictable Unlike an office, an education building is close to fully occupied for defined periods and near empty otherwise. Controls and plant selection should exploit that rather than treat it as a constant load. #### Robustness and maintenance access Fittings and controls in teaching and circulation space need to survive heavy use, and maintenance access has to work around a term calendar rather than a normal shutdown. ### Funeral care https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/funeral-care MEP design for crematoria and funeral facilities — a public ceremonial building and a permitted combustion process under one roof, which have to be kept apart. **Overview** A crematorium is two buildings inside one envelope, and almost every services decision follows from keeping them separate. One half is a place of assembly. Families arrive to a timetable, the chapel has to be quiet, comfortable and discreet, and nothing mechanical should be visible or audible during a service. The other half is closer to light industry: cremators running at high temperature, abatement plant, insulated flues and a stack, all of it operating under an environmental permit with monitoring obligations attached. The failure modes are not subtle. Noise, heat or odour crossing from the technical side into the ceremonial side is not a comfort complaint — it happens in front of mourners, and it is the one thing the building cannot be allowed to do. **Design considerations** #### The separation is the design Ventilation, drainage and electrical distribution all have to serve both halves without providing a path between them. That means separate air handling with no shared return, attention to relative pressures so that air moves from the ceremonial side towards the technical side rather than the reverse, and routing that does not carry plant noise through the chapel structure. #### Abatement is a permit condition, not an option Cremators in England and Wales operate under an environmental permit issued by the local authority, and mercury abatement — mercury arises from dental amalgam — is part of that regime. Abatement plant is large, heavy and hot, and its space, structural loading, access for filter replacement and flue arrangement have to be settled early. Retrofitting the space for it is considerably more expensive than allowing for it at the outset. #### The flue and the stack are architectural constraints Secondary combustion runs at high temperature with a minimum gas residence time, so flues are insulated, substantial and want a short, direct route. Stack height is determined by dispersion rather than by appearance. Both land on the roof plan and on planning, and neither moves easily once the cremator layout is fixed. #### Cremator waste heat is recoverable, and that is a decision to take deliberately There is a genuine heat source here, and it can serve the building or, on some sites, be exported. It is worth appraising properly — but it couples a ceremonial building's heating to a process that runs to an operational schedule, so the appraisal has to cover what happens when the cremators are not running, and what the arrangement looks like to the public. #### Acoustics in the chapel are a services problem Services noise in a room where people speak quietly and pause often is far more noticeable than the same noise elsewhere. Plant selection, attenuation, duct velocities and the location of anything with a motor in it all need setting against a stated design criterion for the space, agreed at the start rather than measured at handover. ### Healthcare https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/healthcare MEP design for primary care, dental and clinical premises, designed to the relevant Health Technical Memoranda. **Overview** Healthcare services design is governed by the Health Technical Memoranda and Health Building Notes, which are considerably more prescriptive than the general Building Regulations and which set requirements for ventilation, water safety, electrical resilience and medical gases. The compliance burden is real and the documents are specific, which makes early confirmation of which HTMs apply to a given premises the single most useful thing to establish at the outset. **Design considerations** #### Ventilation to HTM 03-01 Specialist ventilation requirements apply to treatment and clinical areas, with defined air change rates, pressure regimes and validation requirements. #### Water safety to HTM 04-01 Healthcare water systems carry a higher duty than ACOP L8 alone, with augmented control measures and a written water safety plan. #### Electrical resilience to HTM 06-01 Supply resilience and safety services are defined by the criticality of the clinical activity rather than chosen by the designer. ### Hospitality https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/hospitality MEP design for hotels, restaurants and leisure, including guest comfort, commercial kitchens and high hot water demand. **Overview** Hospitality buildings run continuously, have very uneven demand profiles, and are judged by occupants on exactly the things building services determine: temperature, noise, water pressure and how quickly hot water arrives. Hot water demand in a hotel peaks hard and briefly, and sizing generation and storage for that peak without oversizing for the other twenty-two hours is the characteristic public health problem of the sector. **Design considerations** #### Guest room acoustics Services noise in a bedroom is the most common source of complaint that building services can cause. Terminal unit selection, duct velocity and cross-talk attenuation all have to be resolved at design stage. #### Commercial kitchen services Extract rate, make-up air, gas provision, interlocks and grease management, coordinated with the kitchen designer and with the fire strategy. #### Hot water peak demand Morning peaks in a hotel are severe. Storage and generation are sized against a demand profile rather than an average, with legionella control designed into the layout. ### Industrial and logistics https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/industrial-and-logistics MEP design for warehouses, distribution centres and light industrial units, including process services and high bay lighting. **Overview** Industrial buildings have low services cost per square metre and high consequences when the services are wrong, because the building exists to support an operation rather than to accommodate people. The distinguishing question is always what the process needs: power density, compressed air, process cooling, extract, floor loading for plant, and how much of it has to keep running when something fails. **Design considerations** #### Process requirements come before building requirements The building services follow the operation. Establishing the process load, its diversity and its resilience requirement is the first task, and it is frequently the hardest information to obtain. #### High bay lighting and controls Lighting in a high bay is a mounting height and maintenance problem as much as an illuminance one. Controls that respond to occupancy and daylight have a large effect on a load that runs long hours. #### Heating a large volume Destratification, radiant systems and air rotation each suit different operations. The choice depends on how the space is occupied, not just on its volume. ### Listed buildings and heritage https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/listed-buildings-and-heritage MEP design in listed and conservation area buildings, where the services strategy and the heritage consent are developed together rather than in sequence. **Overview** In a listed building the constraint is not technical difficulty. It is that the ordinary answers — roof plant, external condensers, a new flue, a core drilled through a facade — are consent questions before they are engineering ones, and some of them will not be consented at all. This matters more in some cities than others. A very large proportion of central Edinburgh is listed or within a conservation area, and much of the centre sits within a UNESCO World Heritage Site; Glasgow, Newcastle and Bristol each have substantial protected centres of their own. On those projects the services strategy has to be developed alongside the heritage consent, because a strategy that assumes plant on the roof can be undeliverable and is much cheaper to test at concept than to unpick at Stage 4. **Design considerations** #### The fabric cannot absorb the performance requirement, so the services must Where insulation, glazing and airtightness improvements are limited by what may be altered, the services carry more of the performance target. That usually means lower distribution temperatures, more attention to distribution losses, and more plant space rather than less — the opposite of what a constrained building is assumed to want. #### Reversibility is a design requirement, not a courtesy Installations that can be removed without damage are consented more readily than installations that cannot. That shapes fixing strategy, containment routes and penetration detailing from the outset, and it is a genuine constraint on how services are supported. #### Where the plant goes decides the project Plant location, flue and ventilation terminations, condenser positions and any external equipment are the items most likely to be refused. Establishing what is acceptable — with the conservation officer, early — determines the system selection rather than following from it. #### Routes are found, not designed Existing chases, redundant flues, service risers and floor voids are usually the only available distribution routes, and what is actually there is rarely what the record drawings show. Survey before design, not after. ### Residential https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/residential MEP design for apartment buildings and housing, including heat networks, ventilation and overheating assessment. **Overview** Residential building services have moved a long way in a short time. Heat decarbonisation has displaced the individual gas boiler as the default, overheating assessment has become a design requirement rather than a courtesy, and ventilation has come under much closer scrutiny. Apartment buildings in particular concentrate the difficulty: communal heat distribution, ventilation in single aspect flats, and an overheating risk that is highest in exactly the well insulated, highly glazed dwellings the fabric standards encourage. **Design considerations** #### Overheating is now assessed, not assumed TM59 sets the methodology for homes, and in England Approved Document O makes overheating mitigation a Building Regulations requirement. Both are best addressed while glazing, shading and ventilation are still open questions. #### Heat networks and distribution losses Communal heat networks fail on distribution loss far more often than on generation. Pipe sizing, insulation and control of the secondary side determine whether the system performs as designed. #### Ventilation in single aspect dwellings Where cross ventilation is not available, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is usually the answer, and its duct routes need to be resolved before the ceiling voids are fixed. ### Retail https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/retail MEP design for stores, supermarkets and retail parks, including landlord shell provision and tenant fit-out to brand standards. **Overview** Retail MEP design runs to a programme that is usually shorter than any other sector and to a brand standard that is usually already written. The engineering task is often less about determining the solution than about proving the standard solution works in this particular unit, against this landlord's shell provision, within this trading calendar. That does not make it simple. A rollout across many units multiplies any error in the standard detail, and the constraint that matters most — what the landlord actually provided at the unit boundary — differs every time. **Design considerations** #### Landlord provision is the first thing to establish Incoming electrical capacity, gas provision, drainage points, ventilation routes and any restriction on external plant. These are frequently different from what the head of terms says they are, and a survey before design is cheaper than a variation during fit-out. #### Refrigeration and heat rejection Where the unit has refrigeration, its heat rejection and its interaction with the store's heating and cooling is the dominant mechanical problem, and plant location is usually the binding constraint. #### Trading hours drive the programme Work is frequently out of hours, phased around trading, or compressed into a shutdown. The design has to be buildable in that pattern, which affects isolation strategy, temporary supplies and commissioning sequence. ### Science and laboratories https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/science-and-laboratories MEP design for laboratory and research buildings — containment, fume cupboard ventilation, pressure regimes, resilience and the energy cost of once-through air. **Overview** A laboratory is a ventilation problem with a building around it. Air change rates are high, much of the air cannot be recirculated, and the ventilation system is a safety system rather than a comfort one — which changes the design standard, the resilience requirement and the commissioning regime. It is also where the energy strategy is hardest. Once-through air at laboratory air change rates dominates the building's energy use, and the usual answer to that — recirculation — is unavailable. What is left is heat recovery that cannot cross-contaminate, demand-based control that can be justified safely, and reducing the volume of air that has to be once-through in the first place by zoning the building properly. **Design considerations** #### Containment sets the pressure regime, and the pressure regime sets everything else The containment level determines whether a space is held at negative or positive pressure relative to its neighbours, how the cascade is maintained under fault conditions, and what happens when a door is opened. That cascade has to survive fan failure, filter loading and the building's own stack effect, which is a control and commissioning problem as much as a sizing one. #### Fume cupboards drive the extract, and diversity is a safety decision Fume cupboard face velocity requirements set the extract volume. Applying diversity across a group of cupboards reduces plant size significantly and is common practice — but it is a decision with a safety consequence, and it has to be agreed with the users and recorded rather than assumed by the designer. #### Discharge location is a dispersion calculation Where laboratory extract discharges, at what velocity and how far from any intake, is a dispersion question, not a convenience one. It constrains plant location on the roof and the position of every air intake on the building. #### Resilience is specified, not implied Which systems must continue on loss of a supply, for how long, and on what changeover time — cold rooms, freezers, containment ventilation, critical extract — needs to be stated by the client and designed to, rather than inferred from the word "laboratory". ### Sport and leisure https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/sport-and-leisure MEP design for pools, sports halls and gyms — pool hall humidity and corrosion, high ventilation loads, and lighting to the standard the sport requires. **Overview** Leisure buildings contain the two hardest environments in ordinary construction next to each other: a pool hall, which is warm, humid and chemically aggressive, and a sports hall, which has very high and very intermittent occupancy. They fail in characteristic ways. Pool halls fail through condensation and corrosion — on glazing, in the roof build-up, and inside ductwork that was never specified for the environment. Sports halls fail through ventilation sized for an average that the building never experiences. **Design considerations** #### The pool hall is a moisture control problem first Air is supplied to control humidity and to keep surface temperatures above dew point, not primarily to control temperature. That drives air distribution — glazing has to be washed with supply air to prevent condensation — and it drives the whole plant selection, because latent load rather than sensible load determines the size of the equipment. #### Chloramines are corrosive and they collect low down Disinfection by-products are heavier than air and concentrate at water level, where the swimmers are. Extract taken high up removes heat and leaves the problem. The extract strategy has to take air from where the contaminant actually is, and everything in the airstream — ductwork, fixings, coils, heat recovery — has to be specified for that airstream. #### Sports hall ventilation is a diversity problem Occupancy goes from empty to full and back within minutes, several times a day. Ventilation designed to a steady occupancy is either wasteful or inadequate, usually both at different times, so occupancy or CO₂ based control earns its cost here more clearly than in almost any other building type. #### Lighting is specified by the sport, not by the room Sports lighting requirements come from the governing body of the sport and the level of play, and they set illuminance, uniformity, glare and — where the sport is televised or filmed — colour rendering and flicker. These are specification inputs to be established before design, not assumptions to be made during it. ### Student accommodation https://www.smithde.co.uk/sectors/student-accommodation MEP design for purpose-built student accommodation — hot water diversity, heat networks and metering, overheating, and a fire strategy for unfamiliar occupants. **Overview** Purpose-built student accommodation looks like residential design and behaves like nothing else. Occupancy is dense, arrives and leaves in a single week, and concentrates demand into peaks that residential diversity figures do not describe. Three things decide whether the building works: how domestic hot water is generated and how much diversity was assumed, how heat is distributed and billed, and whether the rooms overheat. The first is where most plant failures originate, the second is where most operational cost disputes originate, and the third is where most post-occupancy complaints originate. **Design considerations** #### Hot water diversity is the critical assumption Simultaneous demand in student accommodation is unusually high, and the standard residential diversity curves under-predict it. Getting this wrong is not a comfort issue that appears gradually — it is a building full of cold showers on the first cold morning of term. #### Heat networks bring an obligation, not just a plant selection Where heat is distributed from a central source, the building falls within heat network regulation and its metering, billing and consumer protection duties. Interface unit selection, return temperature control and standing losses then become commercial as well as technical questions, because a network with poor return temperatures is expensive to run and the cost passes to residents. #### Overheating is assessed, not assumed Small, densely occupied, single-aspect rooms with limited openable area are the classic overheating case, and the assessment methodology is CIBSE TM59. In England, Approved Document O applies to student accommodation as residential building work. The assessment belongs at concept, while glazing, shading and ventilation are still adjustable. #### The fire strategy assumes people who do not know the building Occupants change annually, arrive unfamiliar with the escape routes, and cook at unusual hours. Detection strategy, alarm zoning and the interface between the fire alarm and the ventilation, lifts and access control all need to be designed for that rather than for a settled residential population. ## Projects ### Bowburn care home https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/bowburn-care-home Full electrical design for a purpose-built care home in County Durham, including life safety systems. **The brief** Full electrical design services for a purpose-built care home development in Bowburn, covering the design and coordination of electrical building services to support resident accommodation, communal facilities, staff areas and specialist care environments. **The challenge** A care home is a residential building with the resilience requirements of a healthcare one. Residents cannot self-evacuate, so the fire strategy is built around progressive horizontal evacuation, and that decides the compartmentation the electrical design has to cross and how the alarm is zoned and caused to operate. Standby provision follows from the same point. Nurse call, alarm systems, emergency lighting and the equipment individual residents depend on are the loads that must survive a supply failure, so what sits on the essential supply is a design decision taken at the start rather than an inventory taken at the end. **Our approach** The design incorporated power distribution, lighting, emergency lighting, fire alarm systems, data infrastructure and life safety systems — ensuring compliance with current standards while creating a safe, comfortable and efficient environment for residents and staff. ### Cramlington crematorium https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/cramlington-crematorium Mechanical and electrical design for a new crematorium in Northumberland, including specialist facilities. **The brief** Full mechanical and electrical design services for the construction of a new crematorium facility in Cramlington. The project comprised ceremonial spaces, administration areas and specialist crematorium facilities, all requiring careful coordination of building services systems. **The challenge** A crematorium is two buildings in one envelope. The ceremonial side is a public assembly space where acoustics, discretion and comfort matter and plant must be neither seen nor heard; the technical side is closer to light industry, with cremator plant, abatement equipment, high-temperature flues and a mercury abatement duty that governs both the plant room and the stack. Keeping the two apart is most of the services problem. Ventilation, drainage and electrical distribution all have to serve both without carrying noise, heat or odour from one into the other, and the separation has to hold on a site where ceremonies run to a timetable that the plant cannot interrupt. **Our approach** The design focused on reliability, energy efficiency and user comfort, while supporting the operational requirements of a modern crematorium. ### Dukesway Phase 3, Gateshead https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/dukesway-phase-3 Electrical design converting an empty warehouse into a high-tech engineering facility with gantry cranes. **The brief** Dukesway Phase 3 was a project to transform an empty warehouse into a modern, high-tech engineering facility, complete with several overhead gantry cranes that required specialist power supplies and control systems. **The challenge** The building started as an empty warehouse, and the incoming power supply was not what the new use required. SDE led a team to upgrade the supply to the premises in line with the client's requirements. Delivery depended on the interfaces as much as the design. SDE ensured efficient communication between the structural and architectural teams so the project completed within the required timescale. Gantry cranes are what make the electrical design specialist rather than routine. Travelling supplies, the control and interlock arrangement, and the starting characteristics of the crane motors all bear on the supply design, and the crane's structural support and travel envelope have to be agreed with the structural engineer before the distribution serving it can be positioned. A change of use from warehouse to manufacturing also changes what the building is assessed against — occupancy, escape lighting, alarm coverage and small power density all move together, and none of it is served by the installation the empty building came with. **Our approach** Upgrades were made to the lighting system, with high-bay LED luminaires installed in the warehouse manufacturing facility and modular recessed LED lighting in the office areas. The project also included works to the large external courtyard and car park, with new high-output LED floodlights installed to the building facade, accompanied by pole-mounted lantern heads. An electronic gate and intercom system was also installed. Craig Smith was responsible for the design of the associated electrical supplies, and for liaising with the main contractor to ensure adequate underground ductwork and services trenches were allowed for. ### High street banking framework, UK-wide https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/high-street-banking-framework Ongoing electrical design across a major UK banking framework — refurbishment, fit-out and relocation in live branches. **The brief** Ongoing electrical design services across a major UK high street banking framework, delivering refurbishment, maintenance and fit-out projects throughout the United Kingdom. Projects range from minor alterations through to full branch refurbishments and relocations. **The challenge** The work is carried out in live banking environments, and the framework demands rapid response times, close coordination with stakeholders and the ability to deliver practical solutions within demanding programmes. A framework rewards consistency more than invention. The value is in a repeatable approach — the same design standards, the same drawing conventions, the same evidence pack — so that a branch in one town can be assessed against a branch in another and the client is not relearning the deliverable each time. Most branches are also leasehold within a larger building, so the landlord's consent and the limits of the demise sit alongside statutory compliance as things to establish before design rather than during it. **Our approach** Power distribution, lighting, emergency lighting and fire alarm modifications, together with landlord liaison and statutory compliance. ### Love Loan, Glasgow https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/love-loan-glasgow Electrical design for a four-storey CAT B office fit-out in Glasgow city centre. **The brief** Full electrical design services for a four-storey CAT B office fit-out within Glasgow city centre. The project transformed existing office accommodation into a modern workplace environment incorporating open-plan office space, meeting rooms, collaboration areas and staff facilities. **The challenge** A CAT B fit-out inherits its constraints. The landlord's CAT A installation fixes where the risers rise, what capacity arrives at the floor, how the base-build ventilation is zoned and where the fire alarm interfaces sit, and the tenant's layout has to work inside all of it. Open-plan floors, cellular meeting rooms and collaboration space each want a different lighting, small power and data density, so the recurring question on a four-storey fit-out is whether the base build can carry the intended occupancy at all — established against the landlord's specification and the existing distribution before the layout is committed, not after. **Our approach** Working under a design and build contract, the design included power distribution, lighting, emergency lighting, fire alarm modifications and data infrastructure. The completed scheme delivered a high-quality, flexible working environment tailored to the client's operational requirements. ### Mercedes-Benz and Toyota, Fort Kinnaird https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/mercedes-benz-toyota-fort-kinnaird Mechanical and electrical design for the refurbishment of a live Mercedes-Benz dealership to add a Toyota showroom. **The brief** Full mechanical and electrical design services for the refurbishment and reconfiguration of an existing Mercedes-Benz dealership to incorporate a new Toyota showroom and associated facilities. **The challenge** The project required the integration of two automotive brands within a live dealership environment, while maintaining operational continuity throughout. Manufacturer standards are the other constraint, and they are prescriptive. Each brand sets its own requirements for showroom lighting — illuminance, colour temperature and colour rendering, chosen so vehicle paint reads correctly — along with its own signage, branding and customer-area provisions. Where two brands share a building, both sets have to be satisfied in adjacent spaces without the boundary between them looking like a compromise. **Our approach** Services included lighting, power, HVAC, ventilation and showroom-specific installations, designed to meet manufacturer requirements and enhance the customer experience. ### NHS MRI facilities, Edinburgh and Glasgow https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/nhs-mri-facilities Electrical design for multiple MRI installations in live NHS hospitals across Edinburgh and Glasgow. **The brief** Electrical design services for multiple MRI installations within live healthcare environments, including facilities at the Queen's Medical Research Institute at Edinburgh BioQuarter, the Clinical Research Imaging Centre, New Victoria Hospital and Stobhill Hospital. **The challenge** Each installation sat inside an operational hospital. The constraint was rarely the equipment: it was what could be isolated, when, and what kept the rest of the department running while it happened. MRI also brings requirements that ordinary hospital electrical design does not. The scanner's own supply, the containment routed around it and the coordination with the equipment supplier all have to resolve together, and all have to satisfy NHS standards alongside the project requirements. A scan room is also a shielded room. The RF cage and the magnet's fringe field between them govern what may be installed, where cables may cross the boundary and what has to pass through a waveguide or filter plate rather than a hole — which makes containment routing a decision taken with the equipment supplier at the outset, not a coordination exercise afterwards. **Our approach** Specialist electrical infrastructure, power distribution upgrades and containment systems, designed in coordination with the MRI equipment suppliers. Careful planning and stakeholder engagement were essential throughout — to minimise disruption to operational healthcare facilities while ensuring compliance with NHS standards and project requirements. ### Roehampton Golf Club leisure facility https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/roehampton-golf-club Mechanical and electrical design for a new leisure facility with golf simulator suites at Roehampton Golf Club. **The brief** Full mechanical and electrical design services for a new leisure facility at Roehampton Golf Club. The development incorporated state-of-the-art golf simulator suites and associated facilities, designed to enhance the club's year-round offering. **The challenge** A golf simulator bay is a small, sealed, heavily occupied room containing projection, tracking and computing equipment, and it gains heat from all three at once. Sized on floor area it will overheat; sized on the equipment schedule and the occupancy it will not. The equipment also sets tolerances the building has to meet rather than the other way round. Tracking systems specify their own mounting positions, sightlines and power quality, and lighting has to serve the room without washing out a projected image — so the specialist provisions are coordinated with the supplier before the layout is fixed. **Our approach** The project included power distribution, lighting, ventilation, heating and cooling systems, together with specialist provisions for the simulator equipment. Close coordination with the client and design team ensured a modern and flexible facility for members and visitors. ### Royal Observatory Edinburgh — Villas Building https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/royal-observatory-edinburgh-villas-building Electrical design for the CAT B refurbishment of the Grade A listed Villas Building at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. **The brief** SDE was directly appointed to provide electrical design services for the CAT B refurbishment of the Grade A listed Villas Building at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. **The challenge** The project involved the introduction of modern office facilities and infrastructure within a sensitive historic environment. In a Grade A listed interior, almost every electrical decision is also a consent decision. Where cable can be run, what may be chased into or fixed to historic fabric, how luminaires are mounted and where they are positioned, and whether a distribution board can be located in a room at all are all questions answered with the conservation officer rather than around them. The usual consequence is surface and reversible in place of concealed and permanent, with routes following existing service voids and later interventions wherever they exist — which means the survey has to establish what those are before any distribution strategy is drawn. **Our approach** Careful consideration was given to preserving the character of the building while delivering a practical and compliant electrical design solution capable of supporting contemporary workplace requirements. ### Southampton FC Fan Zone, St Mary's Stadium https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/southampton-fc-fan-zone Full mechanical and electrical design for a new matchday fan zone at St Mary’s Stadium, Southampton. **The brief** Full mechanical and electrical design services for the new Fan Zone development at Southampton Football Club's St Mary's Stadium. The development included multiple hospitality units, bar facilities, food service areas and a central entertainment stage, designed to support large matchday crowds. **The challenge** A stadium concourse is a demand profile, not an average. The building is close to empty for most of the week and at full occupancy for a few hours on a matchday, and the ventilation, power and drainage all have to be sized for the peak while remaining controllable at everything below it. Food service concentrates the difficulty further: kitchen extract, make-up air, gas or electrical loads and grease-bearing ductwork all have to be resolved in the same ceiling as the public-facing services, and the fire strategy for a space holding a large crowd governs where any of it can go. **Our approach** The design incorporated power distribution, lighting, ventilation, public-facing services and the infrastructure to support events and hospitality operations. Close coordination with the wider design team ensured the successful delivery of a vibrant and flexible venue for supporters. ### St Colme Street hotel conversion, Edinburgh https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/st-colme-street-hotel-conversion Mechanical and electrical design for the conversion of a traditional Edinburgh office building into a boutique hotel. **The brief** SDE was appointed by the project architect to provide full mechanical and electrical design services for the conversion of a traditional office building into a boutique hotel within Edinburgh city centre. **The challenge** The project required careful integration of modern building services within an existing structure, across guest accommodation, public areas and back-of-house facilities. A hotel is a harder services problem than the office it replaces. Guest rooms need en-suite drainage and water, ventilation and independently controllable heating and cooling in a structure that was never planned around vertical service routes, and the acoustic separation a hotel requires is a services question as much as a fabric one — plant noise, duct-borne crosstalk and drainage noise all reach the bedroom. Domestic hot water is the load that tends to decide the plant strategy, because hotel demand peaks hard in the morning and the storage and plant space to meet it have to be found somewhere in a building already fixed in size. **Our approach** Working under a traditional procurement route, the design team developed coordinated and energy-efficient solutions suitable for the building's new use. ### Topgolf Glasgow https://www.smithde.co.uk/projects/topgolf-glasgow Electrical design for the first Topgolf venue in Scotland, including ball-tracking and broadcast infrastructure. **The brief** SDE were employed through Arthur McKay to assist with the electrical design works, with Craig Smith as the senior electrical design engineer on the project, ensuring all works were completed to the client's standards. The first of its kind in Scotland. **The challenge** Key challenges included a detailed, coordinated layout of the driving range area, ensuring it fitted with the client's design standards. Particular attention was paid to the US-imported, high-end electronic systems for golf ball tracking and score recording. Imported equipment brings its own electrical assumptions. A system designed for a 120 V, 60 Hz supply and to US wiring conventions has to be reconciled with BS 7671, which affects supply arrangement, protective device selection and earthing, and the manufacturer's requirements have to be verified against what is permissible here rather than adopted as issued. The bar is a second problem of the same kind. Broadcasting live sport across a large space means display power, data and AV containment coordinated with the lighting and the structure, all in a room whose acoustic and lighting conditions are set by what it is for. **Our approach** Craig assisted in the design and delivery of the electrical infrastructure and the project-specific electrical requirements — including a new driving range encompassing a high-end electronic golf ball tracking and scoring system, and a large bar with specific requirements for broadcasting live sports. ## Coverage ### Belfast https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/belfast MEP design for Belfast projects, to the Building Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2012 and the Technical Booklets, through Belfast City Council building control. **How we work here** Drainage goes first on a Belfast project. The pre-development enquiry is raised as soon as the site and the intended density are known, because the answer can change the scheme: on-site attenuation, a different surface water strategy, or in a constrained catchment a developer-funded network solution. None of those is cheap to introduce once the layout is fixed. The rest follows the pattern of any city centre refurbishment — establish by survey what incoming capacity, riser space and floor-to-floor height actually exist rather than reading them off record drawings, and settle the heritage consent and the services strategy together rather than in sequence. Worth confirming the boundary too. The Belfast metropolitan area runs across Lisburn and Castlereagh, Ards and North Down, Antrim and Newtownabbey and Newry, Mourne and Down, each of which is its own building control body with its own local development plan. ### Birmingham https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/birmingham MEP design for Birmingham projects, to the Building Regulations 2010, with building control through Birmingham City Council or a registered approver. **How we work here** Birmingham sits at the centre of a conurbation with six other unitary authorities immediately around it — Solihull, Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Coventry — so the first thing worth confirming on a West Midlands project is which one the site is actually in. Building control, planning policy and fees all follow the boundary rather than the address. On the refurbishment work that makes up most of the city centre pipeline, SDE surveys before designing. What matters is measured: incoming electrical capacity and the position of the intake, the actual clear void between structure and ceiling rather than the figure on the record drawing, riser space that is available rather than riser space that is drawn, and the condition of anything intended to be retained. ### Bristol https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/bristol MEP design for Bristol projects, to the Building Regulations 2010, with building control through Bristol City Council or a registered approver. **How we work here** Two things tend to drive the services strategy on a Bristol project. The first is heat. Bristol City Leap is delivering a city heat network in phases, and where a site sits within reach of it, connection is a question the planning authority will expect to have been considered and answered — including where a direct connection is not yet available, in which case the usual expectation is that the building is left connection-ready rather than committed to a plant strategy that would have to be undone. The second is the existing stock. Much of the city centre and the older commercial estate is Georgian and Victorian, a substantial part of it listed or in a conservation area. Where fabric intervention is constrained, the services have to absorb more of the performance requirement, and the room to do that has to be established by survey before anything is designed around it. ### Edinburgh https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/edinburgh MEP design in Edinburgh, with building warrants through City of Edinburgh Council and heavy listed and conservation area constraints. **How we work here** SDE is based in Musselburgh, seven miles east of Edinburgh, so Edinburgh projects are local. Site attendance is straightforward and surveys can usually be arranged at short notice. ### England https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/england MEP design across England, to the Building Regulations 2010 and the Approved Documents, with building control by a local authority or registered approver. **How we work here** SDE's English work is run from the Newcastle office at Collingwood Buildings, with engineers attending site at the stages that need it — survey, coordination workshops, witnessing and handover. Most English projects need fewer visits than people expect. The ones that matter are the ones where being in the building changes the design, and those are worth travelling for from anywhere. ### Glasgow https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/glasgow MEP design for projects in Glasgow, with building warrant applications through Glasgow City Council. **How we work here** Glasgow is under an hour from the Musselburgh office, so survey and site attendance are same-day rather than an overnight trip. The decision that now shapes most new Glasgow projects is made before anything else: the New Build Heat Standard means a warrant application for a new building cannot rely on a direct emission heating system, so the heat strategy is settled at concept rather than developed alongside the rest of the design. On refurbishment the sequencing is the reverse — nothing is decided until the survey establishes what incoming capacity, riser space and plant space actually exist, because in a converted Victorian building the record drawings are usually a description of an earlier building. ### London https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/london MEP design for London projects, to the Building Regulations and the London Plan, where energy and cooling hierarchies apply in addition. ### Manchester https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/manchester MEP design for Manchester projects, to the Building Regulations 2010, with building control through Manchester City Council or a registered approver. **How we work here** The two questions that decide the shape of a Manchester residential project are asked in the first week: is it a higher-risk building, and if so, what does Gateway 2 need to contain. The gateway regime moves design effort earlier. A services design that would conventionally firm up through Stage 4 and be coordinated on site has to be resolved and evidenced before construction starts, and the golden thread means the information has to be structured to be handed on rather than assembled at handover. That is a programme decision as much as a technical one, and it is cheaper to plan for than to discover. Outside the residential towers, the recurring Manchester project is a warehouse or mill conversion in Ancoats, Castlefield or the Northern Quarter, where the constraint is what can be penetrated and where the risers can go — a survey question, not a design assumption. ### Newcastle upon Tyne https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/newcastle MEP design from SDE’s Newcastle office at Collingwood Buildings, to the Building Regulations 2010, approved through Newcastle City Council building control. **How we work here** SDE has an office in Newcastle, at Collingwood Buildings on Collingwood Street, a few minutes' walk from Newcastle Central Station and inside the Grainger Town conservation area described above. It is the practice's base for the North East and for English work generally, and it means site attendance in the region is local rather than a trip from Scotland. The Musselburgh office is a little over ninety minutes away by train on the East Coast Main Line, so the two work as one team rather than as two. The recurring pattern on the university and hospital estates in the city is refurbishment inside an operational building. That changes the design problem: the constraint is rarely the plant selection but what can be isolated, when, and what temporary provision keeps the rest of the building running while it happens. Those questions belong in the strategy at concept, not in the contractor's method statement at Stage 5. ### Northern Ireland https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/northern-ireland MEP design in Northern Ireland, to the Building Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2012 and the Technical Booklets, with building control by the district council. **How we work here** The compliance route is confirmed against the Technical Booklets at the outset rather than at submission, and where the same building type is being developed on both sides of the water the energy models are built separately rather than one adapted from the other. Because there is no Part P, the electrical scope is written to say what would otherwise be assumed: design and installation to BS 7671, and the inspection, testing and certification handed over as a deliverable. On a Great Britain project a competent person scheme notification arrives whether anyone asked for it or not. Here nothing arrives unless it was specified, and the time to find that out is at appointment. The product schedule is checked for marking before anything is ordered. Under the Windsor Framework the EU Construction Products Regulation still applies in Northern Ireland, so a product placed on the market here carries CE marking — or CE with UKNI where a UK approved body carried out the third-party assessment. A UKCA mark on its own does not cover Northern Ireland. A specification written for a Great Britain project can therefore name equipment that cannot lawfully be supplied here, and that is a procurement problem discovered on site rather than a design one discovered at review. Water and drainage capacity is established early. NI Water answers a pre-development enquiry within a target of 65 working days and the answer is valid for eighteen months, so it belongs at the start of the programme rather than alongside the building control submission. ### Scotland https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/scotland MEP design across Scotland, to the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004 and the Technical Handbooks, through a building warrant granted before work starts. **How we work here** SDE is based in Musselburgh, East Lothian, and works throughout Scotland. Warrant applications are prepared with the drawings and calculations the verifier will expect, and queries during processing are answered directly rather than routed through the design team. ### Wales https://www.smithde.co.uk/coverage/wales MEP design across Wales, to the Building Regulations as applied in Wales, where Parts L and F diverge from the English versions. **How we work here** The compliance route is confirmed against the Welsh editions of the relevant Approved Documents at the outset rather than at submission, and where a client is developing the same building type on both sides of the border the two are modelled separately rather than one being adapted from the other. Two things worth settling early on a Welsh public sector project. The first is the evidence the client needs: a Well-being of Future Generations duty tends to arrive in the brief as a requirement for operational and embodied carbon figures, and producing those is a different exercise from Part L compliance, best scoped at appointment rather than discovered at Stage 3. The second is signage. Welsh Language Standards apply to public bodies, and statutory and wayfinding signage on their buildings is normally required bilingually — which reaches the electrical package, because exit and emergency signage is specified there and the legend has to be right before it is ordered. Wales has twenty-two principal councils and no county tier beneath them, so the authority that grants approval is the same one that determines the planning application. ## Articles ### Why MEP design fees fall as a percentage when project value rises https://www.smithde.co.uk/articles/why-mep-fees-fall-as-project-value-rises A flat percentage fee is either too high on large projects or unsustainable on small ones. What actually drives the sliding scale. **Article** ### The sliding scale MEP design fees are usually quoted as a percentage of the mechanical, electrical and public health construction value, and that percentage falls as value rises. On a small installation the figure might be around five per cent for full design; on a multi-million pound one it can be closer to two. ### Why effort does not scale with value The number of engineering decisions in a building is a function of its complexity, not its size. Doubling the floor area of a warehouse adds very little to the design effort. Doubling the floor area of a laboratory adds a great deal. A percentage fee handles this crudely but adequately at the population level: larger projects are, on average, less design-intensive per pound of construction value. It is a proxy, and it is a reasonable one, but it is not a measurement. ### What makes fee proposals incomparable Because the percentage is a proxy, two proposals quoting different percentages may be quoting entirely different work. The variables that matter more than the headline rate: - RIBA stages included. Stages 1 to 3 are around a third of the total, technical design at Stage 4 over half, with the balance across construction and handover. A proposal covering Stages 2 to 4 is not comparable to one covering 0 to 7. - Specification level. A performance specification carries considerably less drawing effort than a fully detailed one. - BIM delivery. Modelling to a defined level of information need is an addition, and a substantial one. - What is excluded. Utility applications, warrant submissions, site attendance frequency and commissioning witnessing are all commonly excluded and commonly assumed to be included. ### The practical advice Compare deliverables and stages, not percentages. Ask what is excluded before asking what the rate is. A proposal that lists what it does not cover is usually the one that has been thought about. ### Building warrant or Building Regulations approval: what changes when you cross the border https://www.smithde.co.uk/articles/building-warrant-vs-building-regulations-approval Scotland requires approval before work starts. England does not always. The difference reshapes the design programme, not just the paperwork. **Article** ### The procedural difference The most consequential difference between Scottish and English building control is not technical. It is when approval has to exist. In Scotland, a building warrant must be applied for and granted by the local authority verifier before work starts. There is no equivalent of the English building notice route, under which construction can begin and details can follow. ### Why that changes the design programme If approval must precede construction, the design information supporting it must precede construction too. A services design that would be developed through the early construction period on an English project has to be substantially complete before a Scottish project can begin on site. This is routinely underestimated when a design team accustomed to English procedure takes on Scottish work. The programme is not the same programme with an extra form in it. ### Completion certificates The second procedural difference sits at the other end. A Scottish building cannot be occupied until the local authority has accepted a completion certificate, which puts commissioning records, test certificates and as-fitted information directly on the critical path to occupation rather than trailing behind it. ### Where England is converging The Building Safety Act 2022 gateway regime, which applies to higher-risk buildings in England, requires approval from the Building Safety Regulator before construction starts — much closer to the Scottish model than to the traditional English one. For those buildings, the two jurisdictions now behave more alike than they used to. ### Computational automation and AI in building services design https://www.smithde.co.uk/articles/computational-automation-in-building-services-design Much design engineering time goes on transcription, not judgement. What happens to carbon, and to competence, if that part is automated. **Article** ### Where the time actually goes Ask a design engineer what they spent the week doing and the answer is rarely "engineering". It is more often re-entering the same information in four places: a calculation, a drawing, a schedule and a specification, each of which has to agree with the other three and none of which shares a source. That transcription work is real, necessary under current tooling, and almost entirely free of engineering judgement. It is also where a large share of errors originate, because manual re-entry across four artefacts is exactly the process most likely to leave one of them out of date. ### The carbon argument is indirect The obvious environmental claim for automation — that it reduces the energy consumed by the design process — is trivially small and not worth making. The real argument runs through option appraisal. The decisions with the greatest influence over a building's lifecycle carbon are taken early, when the design still has freedom: system selection, plant sizing philosophy, the balance of fabric against services. Appraising those options properly takes time, and it is the first thing compressed when fee and programme are tight. If automation removes transcription work from the same fee, the time released goes somewhere. Directed at option appraisal, it has a carbon effect several orders of magnitude larger than any saving in the design process itself. ### The competence problem This is the part that cannot be waved through. A chartered engineer carries professional responsibility for the designs they issue. That responsibility does not diminish because a calculation was produced by a tool rather than by hand, and the engineer cannot discharge it by pointing at the software. What follows is a requirement on the tool rather than on the engineer: the output has to be interrogable. An engineer must be able to see the inputs, follow the method, identify the assumptions and form an independent view on whether the answer is right. A tool that returns a number with no accessible reasoning has not made the engineer faster; it has made them liable for something they cannot examine. ### The test worth applying For any automated design tool, the useful question is not how much time it saves. It is whether a competent engineer can take its output, reconstruct how it got there, and defend it to a peer. Where that is possible, automation is straightforwardly good: the same judgement, applied to more options, in less time. Where it is not, the tool has concentrated risk rather than reduced work — and it has done so at exactly the point in the process where an error is least likely to be caught. ### Certifying the unfamiliar: extending the Passivhaus standard to non-residential building types https://www.smithde.co.uk/articles/passivhaus-non-residential-building-types Passivhaus is described as building-type agnostic, but its thresholds derive from dwellings. Applying it to a hotel or school relocates the difficulty. **Article** ### The claim of type agnosticism The Passivhaus standard is presented as applicable to any building type. Its criteria are expressed as performance limits — annual heating demand, primary energy, airtightness, overheating frequency — rather than as prescriptive constructions, and on that basis the claim is defensible. But the thresholds themselves, the default assumptions embedded in the Passivhaus Planning Package, and the empirical evidence base behind both, derive overwhelmingly from dwellings in a heating-dominated Central European climate. That is not a criticism of the standard. It is a description of where its calibration came from, and it matters as soon as the building in question is not a dwelling. ### What transfers and what does not The building physics transfers. Heat loss through a wall does not depend on whether the space behind it is a bedroom or a classroom, and the fabric-first logic of the standard holds regardless of use. What does not transfer is the boundary conditions. For a dwelling, PHPP supplies defaults for occupancy density, internal gains, hot water demand and use pattern that are well evidenced and rarely worth arguing with. For a hotel, those defaults describe nothing: occupancy is intermittent and highly variable, internal gains are dominated by equipment rather than people, and hot water demand peaks in a way no residential profile anticipates. The engineering work therefore relocates. It stops being a question of how to meet the target and becomes a question of what the target is actually being calculated against — and that is a judgement exercise carried out by the design team, not a lookup. ### The consequences for building services Two follow directly. The first is that very low heating loads make plant selection harder. A building with a heating demand at the Passivhaus threshold may need so little installed capacity that commercially available equipment cannot modulate down to it, and the plant spends its life cycling. The problem is not achieving the load; it is serving it well. The second is that ventilation becomes the primary system rather than a secondary one. Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery carries both the air quality duty and a significant part of the thermal duty, which raises the consequences of duct routing, pressure drop and commissioning accuracy well above what they would be in a conventionally serviced building. ### Airtightness is a services problem The airtightness criterion is verified by measurement, not by calculation, and building services are the most common source of failure. Every duct, pipe, cable and flue that crosses the airtight line is a potential leak, and the detailing has to be resolved during design rather than negotiated on site after a failed test. ## Pages ### About SDE https://www.smithde.co.uk/about Building services engineering consultancy designing mechanical, electrical and public health systems for buildings across the United Kingdom. **Content** Smith Design Engineering Ltd is a firm of MEP consultants — a building services engineering consultancy — registered in Scotland, company number SC713846, working on projects throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. ### What we do SDE designs the mechanical, electrical and public health systems in buildings — heating, ventilation and cooling; power, lighting and life safety; water, drainage and gas — at RIBA Stages 0 to 7. All three disciplines are designed in-house. That is the reason coordination happens before drawings are issued rather than after a contractor finds the clash, and it is why a single appointment covers the whole of the building services scope. ### How we work Design is delivered remotely, with engineers attending site at the stages that genuinely need it: survey, coordination workshops, witnessing and handover. That model is what allows a practice based in East Lothian to work across the UK without carrying the overhead of offices it does not need — and the saving belongs to the client rather than to the practice. We work to the building control regime of the relevant jurisdiction. In England and Wales that means the Building Regulations and the Approved Documents. In Scotland it means the Building (Scotland) Regulations, the Technical Handbooks, and a building warrant granted before work starts — a procedural difference that changes the design programme, not just the paperwork. ### What we are investing in A significant part of MEP design is transcription rather than judgement: the same information re-entered between calculation, drawing, schedule and specification. SDE is investing in removing that work rather than absorbing it into fees, so that engineering time goes into the decisions that actually determine how a building performs. Every automated output is reviewed and signed by a named engineer who carries professional responsibility for it. Where a design requires chartered sign-off, that is established at appointment and the responsible engineer is named in the appointment. Automation changes how quickly a design is produced. It does not change who is accountable for it. ### Accessibility statement https://www.smithde.co.uk/accessibility How accessible this website is, the standard it is built to, what has and has not been tested, and how to report a problem. **Content** Smith Design Engineering Ltd aims to make this website usable by as many people as possible, and to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 at level AA. ### How this site is built Each of the following describes how the site is actually built, not an intention. - Content works without JavaScript. Every page is rendered as HTML on the server. Scroll animations are a progressive enhancement layered on top; with scripting disabled or blocked, nothing is hidden and no content is lost. - Reduced motion is honoured. Where your device or browser is set to reduce motion, the reveal animations and the drawing animation on the technical banners do not run. - Light and dark themes. The site follows your system preference and can be switched manually. Both are designed to hold text contrast rather than one being an inversion of the other. - Keyboard navigation. Interactive elements are reachable by keyboard and carry a visible focus indicator. A skip link is the first focusable element on every page and jumps past the navigation to the main content. - Landmarks and headings. Pages use header, navigation, main and footer landmarks, and a single level-one heading followed by a nested heading structure. - Images carry alternative text. The content management system makes alternative text a required field rather than an optional one, so an image cannot be published without it. The generated technical drawings are exposed as images with a text description of what they show. - Forms are labelled. Every control in the fee estimator has an associated label, related controls are grouped in a fieldset with a legend, and the result region announces itself when it updates. - Text sizing. Text is set in relative units and reflows when enlarged rather than being clipped. - Language. The page language is declared as British English. ### What has been tested, and what has not This statement is based on a review of the site's code and rendered markup carried out by the team that built it, checking the points listed above. It is not based on an independent audit, and the site has not yet been tested with a screen reader, with speech recognition software, or by disabled users. Those tests are the ones that find the problems a code review does not, and until they have been carried out this statement describes how the site was built rather than certifying how it performs. ### Known limitations - No assistive technology testing has taken place. Until it has, we cannot claim conformance with WCAG 2.2 AA — only that the site was built to meet it. - Colour contrast has been designed for but not measured across every combination in both themes with a contrast tool. - The fee estimator is the most complex interactive element on the site and the part most likely to reveal problems under test. - Technical drawings are decorative. The generated wireframe banners carry a text description of the scene, but they are illustrative and no information appears only in them. ### Reporting a problem If you encounter an accessibility barrier on this site, please tell us using the details on the contact page. Describe what happened, the page it happened on and, if you can, the browser or assistive technology you were using. We will reply and tell you what we intend to do about it. ### Accreditations and quality https://www.smithde.co.uk/governance/accreditations-and-quality Professional memberships and certifications held across the practice, and the design review, checking and approval process applied before any drawing is issued. **Content** ### Professional memberships SDE does not publish a wall of logos. Where an accreditation genuinely applies to a project it is worth naming and worth verifying, and both of those need the awarding body and the reference number — which a logo does not give you. Individual professional memberships and registrations, and the practice's certifications, are supplied in full with each proposal, naming the awarding body and the reference number so that every one of them can be checked independently rather than taken on trust. They are confirmed in writing at the point they are relevant to an appointment, as are certificates including insurance. If a pre-qualification questionnaire asks for something, ask us — the answer will be what is held, including where the answer is that it is not. ### Design review and approval No drawing, calculation or specification leaves SDE without being checked by an engineer who did not produce it. #### The process - Design. The responsible engineer produces the calculation, drawing or specification, recording the assumptions and the standards applied. - Check. A second engineer reviews the work against the brief, the applicable standards and the coordination status of the other disciplines. Comments are recorded rather than passed on verbally. - Approve. The responsible director or associate approves the issue, confirming the check has been closed out. - Issue. Information is issued with a revision and a status. Superseded revisions are withdrawn so there is no ambiguity on site about which version applies. #### Standards applied Design is carried out to the current editions of the relevant British Standards, CIBSE Guides and statutory guidance. Where a standard is amended during a project, the edition the appointment is based on is confirmed in writing rather than left to be discovered at handover. #### Competence Work is carried out by, or under the supervision of, engineers whose qualifications and professional registrations are appropriate to the task. Where a design requires a competence the practice does not hold, that is stated rather than absorbed. ### Cookie policy https://www.smithde.co.uk/cookies What cookies and similar technologies this website uses, and how to control them. **Content** ### Cookies this site currently sets As built, this website sets no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. It does not embed third-party content that tracks you. The only cookies set are strictly necessary ones used when a member of SDE staff signs in to the content management system. Those are not set for ordinary visitors. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, strictly necessary cookies do not require consent. Because no non-essential cookies are set, this site does not display a cookie banner — a banner that asks consent for cookies that do not exist is worse than no banner. ### If this changes If analytics or any third-party embed is added, non-essential cookies will be set and a consent mechanism will be required before they load. This page and the privacy notice must both be updated at that point. ### Controlling cookies You can control and delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking all cookies will prevent SDE staff from signing in to the content management system, but will not affect your use of the public site. ### Environmental policy https://www.smithde.co.uk/governance/environmental-policy How carbon is considered in SDE design decisions, and how the practice manages its own environmental impact. **Content** ### Where the impact actually is The environmental impact of an engineering consultancy is overwhelmingly in the buildings it designs, not in its own operations. A practice that reports diligently on its office recycling and designs oversized plant has its priorities backwards. SDE's environmental policy therefore leads with design. ### In design - Loads are calculated, not padded. Oversized plant is the most common and most expensive carbon failure in building services. Every safety factor applied is a deliberate decision with a stated reason, not an accumulated habit. - Options are appraised while they are still open. The decisions with the greatest influence over lifecycle carbon are taken before Stage 3. Where the appointment allows it, alternatives are modelled and compared on running cost and carbon as well as capital cost, and the comparison is issued rather than summarised. - Compliance modelling is used as a design tool. Part L and Section 6 models are run during design when they can still change the answer, not at submission when they can only report it. - The performance gap is stated. Compliance modelling is not an energy prediction. Where a client needs a prediction of operational energy use, that is a separate exercise carried out to CIBSE TM54 and described as such. - Embodied carbon in services is assessed where the appointment includes it, using CIBSE TM65. ### In our own operations The largest controllable component of a design consultancy's own footprint is travel. Design work is delivered remotely, and site attendance is planned around the stages that genuinely require an engineer to be present — survey, coordination, witnessing and handover — rather than around a standing meeting cycle. Where a visit can be made by rail it usually is. Information is issued digitally. Drawings, calculations and specifications are produced, reviewed and issued electronically, and printing is the exception rather than the default. These are worth stating and not worth overstating. They are a small number against the carbon in the buildings above, which is why this policy leads with design. ### Equality, diversity and inclusion https://www.smithde.co.uk/governance/equality-diversity-inclusion SDE’s commitments on equality, diversity and inclusion in recruitment, employment and the delivery of work. **Content** ### Commitment Smith Design Engineering Ltd is committed to providing equality of opportunity and to maintaining a working environment free from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. SDE does not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation — the protected characteristics defined by the Equality Act 2010. ### In practice - Recruitment and selection are conducted against the requirements of the role. - Development and progression are available on the same basis to everyone in the practice. - Reasonable adjustments are made for disabled employees, applicants and visitors. - Accessibility in design. SDE designs to the accessibility requirements of the relevant Building Regulations, and treats accessible design as a functional requirement rather than a compliance box. ### Why this matters in engineering specifically Building services engineering has a narrow recruitment base, and a practice that recruits from the same place in the same way gets the same engineers and the same design habits. That is a technical problem before it is a moral one: the range of buildings SDE works on — healthcare, education, hospitality, industrial, heritage — is served better by people who have not all arrived by the same route. The practical commitment is that a role is written around what the work requires rather than around who has done it before, and that a route in through an HNC, an apprenticeship or a career change is treated as equivalent to a route in through a degree where the competence is the same. ### Raising a concern Anyone who believes they have experienced or witnessed discrimination in connection with SDE's work is encouraged to raise it with a director. Concerns are taken seriously and investigated, and raising one in good faith will never count against the person who raises it. Where a concern relates to a project rather than to the practice — the conduct of another party on a site SDE is working on — it is raised with the client and, where the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations apply, with the principal designer. ### Governance and policies https://www.smithde.co.uk/governance Policies, accreditations and quality processes that clients request at pre-qualification, published rather than sent on request. **Content** Most of what follows is requested at pre-qualification by main contractors, public sector clients and framework operators. Publishing it removes a round of correspondence from the start of every appointment. ### Policies - Accreditations and quality — how work is checked and approved before it is issued, and where to find the professional registrations held across the practice - Health and safety — CDM 2015 designer duties, risk elimination in design and the design risk register - Environmental policy — how carbon is considered in design decisions, and how the practice manages its own impact - Equality, diversity and inclusion - Modern slavery statement Where a pre-qualification questionnaire asks for a policy in a particular format, say so and it will be issued in that format rather than as a link. ### Insurance Professional indemnity and public liability cover are held. Certificates and cover levels are confirmed on request for a specific appointment, and are not published — cover is arranged per appointment and a published figure would not reliably describe the cover applying to your project. ### Company information Smith Design Engineering Ltd is registered in Scotland, company number SC713846. The register entry is public at Companies House. ### Health and safety https://www.smithde.co.uk/governance/health-and-safety How SDE discharges its designer duties under CDM 2015, including risk elimination in design and the design risk register. **Content** ### Designer duties under CDM 2015 The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 place specific duties on designers. SDE acts as a designer under those Regulations on every project. #### Eliminate, reduce, control The designer's duty is to eliminate foreseeable risk so far as is reasonably practicable, then to reduce what cannot be eliminated, and then to control what remains — in that order. Providing information about a hazard is the last step, not the first. In building services design this most often applies to: - Maintenance access. Plant that cannot be reached safely will be reached unsafely. Access is a design decision taken at layout stage. - Working at height. Luminaire, terminal unit and valve positions determine how they are replaced for the life of the building. - Confined spaces. Plant rooms, ducts, tanks and voids. - Hazardous substances. Refrigerants, water treatment chemicals and any legacy material identified by survey. - Live working. Isolation and switching arrangements designed so that live working is not required. #### The design risk register Significant residual risks — those that are not obvious to a competent contractor — are recorded in a design risk register issued with the design information, identifying the hazard, who is exposed and what has been done about it. The register records residual risk. It is not a substitute for eliminating risk, and a register listing hazards that could have been designed out is a failure of the process rather than evidence of it. #### Cooperation SDE cooperates with the principal designer, the principal contractor and the other designers, and provides information about its design in the form and at the time it is needed. ### Modern slavery statement https://www.smithde.co.uk/governance/modern-slavery-statement SDE’s position on modern slavery and human trafficking in its business and supply chain. **Content** ### Scope of this statement Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires a statement from commercial organisations with a turnover of £36 million or more. Smith Design Engineering Ltd is below that threshold and is not required to publish one. This statement is published voluntarily. Main contractors, public sector clients and framework operators routinely ask for one at pre-qualification regardless of the threshold, and publishing it is quicker than answering the same question in every questionnaire. ### Our position Smith Design Engineering Ltd does not tolerate modern slavery or human trafficking in any part of its business or supply chain. ### Our business SDE is a building services engineering consultancy providing mechanical, electrical and public health design. It does not manufacture, does not construct, and does not procure goods or labour from the sectors and jurisdictions ordinarily assessed as high risk. The practice assesses the risk of modern slavery occurring within its own business as low, on the basis of the size of the practice, the professional and qualified nature of the work, and the fact that everyone carrying it out is known to the directors personally. ### Our supply chain SDE's supply chain consists principally of professional services, software licences and IT. The risk of modern slavery within it is correspondingly low, and it is not a supply chain in which the practice has purchasing power over a manufacturer or a labour provider. The exception worth naming is subconsultants. Where specialist input is engaged on a project, the expectation is that the subconsultant maintains standards equivalent to those set out here. ### Steps taken - Verifying the right to work of everyone engaged by the practice. - Paying at or above statutory minimum rates. - Engaging engineering staff directly rather than through unverified intermediaries. - Expecting subconsultants and suppliers to maintain equivalent standards, and asking where that is not evident. - Reviewing this statement annually, and on any material change to how the practice engages people. ### Privacy notice https://www.smithde.co.uk/privacy How Smith Design Engineering Ltd collects, uses and protects personal data, and your rights under UK GDPR. **Content** This notice describes what Smith Design Engineering Ltd does with personal data. It describes the website as it is actually built, not as a template says a website usually works, and it is updated when the site changes rather than annually. ### Who we are Smith Design Engineering Ltd, registered in Scotland, company number SC713846, is the data controller for personal data processed through this website and in the course of its work. For any question about your personal data, or to exercise any of the rights below, write to sales@smithde.co.uk or use the details on the contact page. ### What we collect - Enquiry information. Your name, organisation, email address, telephone number and whatever you tell us, when you contact us. - Project information. Contact details of the people involved in projects we are appointed on, and the correspondence and documents that go with them. - Fee estimator inputs. Building type, floor area, number of storeys, region, specification level and the RIBA stages you select. We do not ask for and do not want special category data. Please do not send it to us. ### The fee estimator The inputs you choose are sent to our server, the range is calculated there, and the result is returned to your browser. This is deliberate — the rate card the calculation uses is not published, so the calculation cannot run in your browser. The inputs are not stored, not logged and not linked to you. Nothing about your use of the estimator reaches us unless you separately send an enquiry. There is no account, and you are not asked to identify yourself. ### Analytics and tracking This site runs no analytics. There is no Google Analytics, no tag manager, no advertising pixel, no session recording and no third-party embed that could track you. We do not build a profile of visitors and we cannot, because we do not collect the data that would be needed to. The only cookies set are the strictly necessary ones used when SDE staff sign in to the content management system, which are never set for ordinary visitors. That is why this site shows no cookie banner: asking consent for cookies that do not exist is theatre. The cookie policy sets this out in full. If analytics are ever added, this notice and the cookie policy are updated before they go live, and a consent mechanism is required first. ### Why we process it - To answer enquiries and produce fee proposals — legitimate interests, and steps taken at your request before entering a contract. - To deliver projects we are appointed on — performance of a contract. - To meet legal and professional obligations, including keeping records for professional indemnity purposes — legal obligation and legitimate interests. We do not use personal data for automated decision-making or profiling. ### Who we share it with We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. Personal data is handled by the service providers we use to run the practice — website hosting, email, and document storage — acting on our instructions as processors under written terms. On a project, contact details are shared with the other parties to that project where the work requires it: the client, the lead consultant, the contractor and any subconsultant we engage. Where we engage a subconsultant, they are held to equivalent standards. We will tell you which providers hold your data if you ask. ### How long we keep it Enquiries that do not lead to an appointment are kept only while they are useful and then deleted. Project records are kept for as long as a claim relating to that project could still be brought and our professional indemnity insurance requires them to be available. In Scotland that period is governed by prescription under the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, and for work in England and Wales by the Limitation Act 1980. Records are deleted once that period has passed. ### Transfers outside the UK Where a service provider processes data outside the United Kingdom, that transfer is made under the safeguards UK GDPR requires — an adequacy decision, or the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum. ### Your rights Under UK GDPR you may ask us for a copy of your personal data, ask us to correct it if it is wrong, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict or stop processing it, object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests, and ask for it in a portable form where that applies. Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw consent at any time. There is no charge, and we will respond within one month. Write to sales@smithde.co.uk. ### Complaints If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your personal data, tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or by telephone on 0303 123 1113. ### Terms of use https://www.smithde.co.uk/terms The terms on which this website and the MEP design fee estimator are made available. **Content** These terms cover use of this website. The terms on which SDE is appointed to carry out design work are a separate document, issued with the fee proposal, and nothing here forms part of them. ### About these terms This website is operated by Smith Design Engineering Ltd, registered in Scotland, company number SC713846. By using the site you accept these terms. ### The fee estimator The MEP design fee estimator on this site produces an indicative range only. It is provided for general guidance. - It is not a quotation, not a fee proposal and not an offer capable of acceptance. - It does not create a contract, and no appointment arises from using it. - It is generated from limited inputs and without sight of drawings, site conditions or the project brief. - A fee proposal is issued only after an engineer has reviewed the project information and confirmed the scope, deliverables and programme. To the extent permitted by law, SDE accepts no liability for any decision taken in reliance on the estimator output. ### Content on this site Technical content is provided for general information. It is not engineering advice for a specific project and must not be relied on as such. Standards, regulations and guidance are amended; content is reviewed periodically but may not reflect the most recent amendment at the time you read it. Engineering advice for a project is given only under a written appointment. ### Intellectual property The content of this site is owned by Smith Design Engineering Ltd unless stated otherwise. You may view and print pages for your own use. You may not reproduce or republish the content commercially without written permission. ### Links to other sites Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience. SDE is not responsible for their content. ### Governing law These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the Scottish courts have jurisdiction. Smith Design Engineering Ltd is registered in Scotland and its trading address is in Scotland. This does not affect any statutory right you have to bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live. ### Changes to these terms These terms may be amended. The date of the last review is shown on this page, and the terms in force are the ones published here when you use the site.