QUANTUM · Quality management for building performance - improving energy performance by life cycle quality management

The estimated average gap between calculated and actual energy performance of the European building stock is 25% for energy performance and 1,5% for comfort performance (as scored by building occupants). Comprehensive research has shown that faultily commissioned and operated building management systems are a main cause for this gap mainly caused by the lack of appropriate and coherent quality management systems for building performance. The objective of this project is therefore to develop and demonstrate pragmatic services and appropriate tools supporting quality management in the design, construction, commissioning and operation phase as a means to close this gap in European buildings. The project will integrate different innovative ICT-driven tools supporting the quality management process into building and energy services, and will apply them to a representative set of European buildings (taking into account different climate zones and different energy services). The result of this project will be a comprehensive QUANTUM quality management platform integrating tools, services and processes. The partners will implement EU-wide dissemination activities to inform the stakeholders about the advantages of comprehensive quality management systems for the building industry, and to promote the tools validated in the project. Stakeholders that will benefit from the results of this project include building owners, tenants, ESCOs, developers, architects, engineering and consulting firms, students and public authorities. Aside from savings on the energy costs CO2 emissions will be reduced and employee productivity in buildings equipped with the tools and services will increase as well due to increased occupant comfort. From previous preliminary data and own estimations, the QUANTUM partners expect that the reduction in energy consumption achieved by coherent quality management for building performance to be more than 10%.