[Press Release | 12.2017]

AMEV TMon: QUANTUM contribution to the first steps towards the market uptake of Quality Management practices

Authors: Tiziana Buso, REHVA; Stefan Plesser, Technische Universität Braunschweig IGS

In August 2017 the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety published AMEV Recommendation n.135, about Technical Monitoring. AMEV, the German Research Group for Mechanical and Electrical Technology, National and Communal Administration, prepared these guidelines throughout a year of intense work, which closely involved experts of the QUANTUM consortium.

The result of this work is a key document for the market uptake of Quality Management practices in the building sector. For the first time, an official recommendation defines the process from design planning to commissioning and operation with a clear and precise tender document. Furthermore, it establishes the role of a third-party quality manager to ensure the buildings’ functional and economic commissioning and continuous operation.

“Tougher requirements for our buildings and at the same time increasing complexity of technical building services make an effective quality management a prerequisite in design, construction and operation,” says the head of AMEV Torsten Wenisch. “The AMEV recommendation Technical Monitoring supports public administration to facilitate this essential service. One part of the guideline is a clear definition of the service that can be used to easily and precisely tender and contract Technical Monitoring as a service.”

The guidelines specifically address builders and managers of public buildings, to test for the desired quality, especially of building technology, at the interfaces between the planning and building phase and the first use phase, and to establish requirements for energy-efficient, functional and needs-oriented building operations.

To offer practical support to Public Administrations (PAs), the recommendation couples informative content and working documents. The body of the document is dedicated to the detailed description of Technical Monitoring services distinguished by planning, building, and first use phase. The Annexes provide to PAs working documents to be directly used in tenders’ specifications.

The publication of AMEV Recommendation 135 opens a series of interesting opportunities to scale up the good practices of Quality Management in the German market and beyond. These guidelines constitute a valuable resource to be integrated with other European/national guidelines about Technical Monitoring, to eventually shape a new EU standard for testing Building Operations.

Additionally, the AMEV guideline can be applied in the German certification scheme Evaluation System for Sustainable Building (BNB). The inclusion of similar valuation modules in other popular certification schemes, such as BREEAM, DGNB or LEED would definitely increase stakeholders’ awareness of the importance of Quality Management.

Press Release [12.2017]

QUANTUM is a 4-years project started in 2016, funded by the H2020 research and innovation programme, led by TU Braunschweig IGS and carried on by 14 partners. The underlying concept of the whole project is that the gap in building performance is not caused by a lack of technology or conceptual intelligence, but by a lack of quality. To address this challenge, QUANTUM develops and demonstrates pragmatic services and tools supporting quality management for building performance in the design, construction, commissioning and operation phase to close the gap between predicted and actual energy performance.

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