Building Performance (Energy Efficiency in Design)

In the words of the World Green Building Council "while we must continue to focus on addressing operational carbon, we must now rapidly increase efforts to tackle embodied carbon emissions at a global scale, too". New terms such as #zeroenergy #wholelifecarbon, #netzerocarbon and #zerocarbonbuilding reflect the widened focus. It is clear that Society looks upon the Built Environment to do much of the 'heavy lifting' in a drive to carbon neutrality and sustainability. The upcoming revision to the Environmental Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and our Building Regulations will bring this widened focus into normal design and compliance practice.

Clearly, architecture, engineering and surveying practices, and the growing number of consultants that support them, need to grow capacity in technical skills and knowledge relating to the performance of buildings. As practices can't wait for university graduates (who may or may not have the required learning, but don't yet have the necessary judgment), they must look at their existing teams to upskill. The only way busy professionals can upskill is part-time. Online learning technology has made this learning journey accessible and satisfactory for a far wider group than was ever possible before.

TU414 MSc in Building Performance (Energy Efficiency in Design) and its constituent parts (TU412 PG Certificate BPEED, TU413 PG Diploma BPEED and various CPD certificate courses) was created by Technological University Dublin to provide transformative learning & upskilling in key areas of technical building design to cross-disciplinary groups building design professionals.

In a great sign of faith in this programme and the willingness of hundreds of building design professionals to upskill, the Irish Government continues to provide Springboard funding (a 90% fee subsidy) for successful applicants to TU412 PG Certificate BPEED (aka Year 1 of the MSc BPEED) since 2018. As Year 1 costs 2,500, the 90% subsidy reduces the fee payable to 250.