In the latest of his interviews with low carbon movers and shakers, Andrew Gaved speaks to a consultant promising to slash clients’ energy costs with rigorous monitoring.
Phil Draper is a consultant who takes delight in his disruptiveness. “I’m quite opinionated,” he says to open the conversation. As if to prove this, he drops in a number of quotes during the course of our interview that are guaranteed to set tongues wagging amongst the hallowed halls of the building services consultant community. Phil is not afraid to speak out, with a confidence born of having seen the building services from the sharp end, after starting out in maintenance within a high-tech manufacturing industry.
He relays a recent conversation with some such consultants at a round table event, telling them he had replaced his own domestic gas boiler at home with a heat pump and Mixergy tank. When enquiring who else had done the same, he was met with silence. “I thought, ‘You are advising your clients to reduce carbon, but you are not walking the walk yourselves.’”
Phil is clearly determined to plough his own furrow with his company Twenty One Engineering (it is named after his old house number, before you start imagining it’s a reference to ideal ambients or something): “My mindset is a bit different – ‘more old-fashioned’ if you like,” he says, “I believe I can find a solution for anything. There is no such thing as a problem without a solution. It is just that you haven’t found the solution yet.”
Twenty One Engineering says it aims to save the client money through a comprehensive overhaul of their building services processes and systems, together with rigorous metering and monitoring. The savings which can be wrought through this make for quite a claim: “We often halve the costs of the competition with our different approach and in-house skills, but mainly we have got building knowledge.
The company sets out its stall on its website: “Expertise is around the best use of building services within properties, and how the management teams deliver these to their staff or occupiers. We are able to maximise the functions of the existing HVAC equipment to improve the efficiency, including their reliability, in addition to offering design for management in building replacement and design.”
Real-world modelling
To illustrate the gulf between design assumptions and theoretical calculations and real-time/real-world-based modelling, Phil adds that the company is quoting currently on a tender for an air source heat pump replacement where they are coming around 40% lower than what the main players are estimating, based on their own design. “And that’s after you have added in extras like variable air volume, condition-based monitoring and other elements that weren’t considered at the outset.”
He stresses that it isn’t rocket science. Instead, it is a thorough attention to detail – and the detail of operation, not initial design.
“It can be distilled down to one line: ‘Building Performance’, he says, “That means maintenance, monitoring and following the operation through…The reason the client we are working with, here in Liverpool Street, has made such inroads into carbon reduction is down to one thing only – metering.”
This metering saves a lot of time and shortens a lot of negotiations, he notes: “We were questioned by a contractor over the sizing of our equipment, but we were able to go back to actual operational energy and weather data to show the factors that dictate the size we specified. It means that there are no assumptions and second-guessing…We will help the client select their preferred chiller or heat pump before it has even gone out to tender – they will know their embodied carbon, and efficiency, so they can budget cost and plan where it is going to fit. And if we have the manufacturer on board with the client as well, it can further help to drive a specific solution.”
It isn’t just about the technology, of course. Providing insight and collaborating play an equal role: “We organised a day where the main contractor and the client could meet all the manufacturers involved – this means that by the time the maintenance contractor gets involved, they already know what they are facing,” he says, “We saved the client £16,000 at the outset by telling them they didn’t need to quote for chemicals.”
Energy management
But the key weapon in the 21 Engineering armoury is its use of energy management techniques and technology, backed by an Energy Bureau, providing continuous condition monitoring to nine of the company’s sites from its Braintree base. In addition, every week someone goes into the building to check what is going on on site. The company believes the combination of expertise and technology is unmatched in the industry. The company says: “We are able to use these systems for energy reduction, compliance and recharges, making best use of the software/hardware. We can also partner with other suppliers to complete projects to match a client’s need to provide a complete turnkey solution.
“What we are trying to instil in the team is ‘what is the client looking for?’” Phil adds. “Is it kilowatts, is it carbon? Because that goal dictates the way you look at it. Carbon is the driver for most clients at the moment…but presenting the cost in the right way and showing what it means makes life so much easier for the client –they don’t have to try and interpret it.”
It is the sheer scale of savings that has enabled Twenty One Engineering to punch above its weight – particularly with Phil Draper’s former employer, a blue-chip developer – and thence to earn work among other heavyweight clients. These include other major developers, a well-known stadium and an equally well-known social media business. To give context, the company now has 13 on its staff including apprentices, which is an expansion of precisely 12 people since lockdown when Phil was operating the business solo.
He acknowledges that the workload made an expansion crucial: “I know my strengths and that’s why I don’t do the detailed design, he says, I employ someone to do that [he has recently taken on AC veteran Julian Brunnock as Applied Design Engineer]. I do the engineering, where my time is best spent. I come up with a solution that my team can then interpret into a design. I focus on knowing a building from the off very well – for most buildings I’ve been in over the last 10 years, I could probably draw the HVAC schematics.
It helps when working with the blue-chip developer that Phil Draper was originally an Senior Engineering Manager at the firm – he is a gatekeeper turned poacher, you might say. Even back then, he was confident in his abilities: “I was the youngest person to be an Engineering manager there at 29 years old. They told me I couldn’t have the job because I didn’t have ‘the leadership ability’. I replied that I had been running a scout troop since I was 18 and obtaining respect from ten-year-olds, so I had no problems with leadership!”
But he makes a serious point – in building services engineering there is a problem, because at the lower levels of contracting and maintenance, there is a shortage of experience and skills and that has a knock-on effect on installations: “People just don’t know how to fix things anymore…There aren’t a lot of people who have the right level of leadership and experience to speak out,” he contends.
Pioneering client
In the quest to help building owners reduce carbon, it also helps that that same client was an early adopter of heat pumps. The developer’s Euston Road project is the proud owner of a four-pipe air-source heat pump, which was installed as long ago as October 2014.
“Since it was installed, that heat pump has reduced the gas bill by 95%,” says Phil, “And the electrical expenditure has gone down too. So the payback time for the heat pump has been just seven years. When we started, we had commercial boilers specified as backup. But we don’t need that for the new installations.”
It is a telling commentary on the changes in priorities that the second heat pump wasn’t specified by this client until six years later, he says: “In the early days, the driver was cost, but now the driver is carbon reduction, so heat pumps are easier to specify. After nine years of operation, the air-source heat pump is a relatively straightforward concept for the client. We now have to get their heads around things like water source heat pumps and ambient loops…”
Phil acknowledges that still for many commercial clients, there is caution around the new low-carbon technology: “The outlet temperature on a cold day is what gives the nervousness around heat pumps. The default design strategy for a new build is sized for a 50 deg C outlet temperature at -5 deg C ambient. How do you get that to work without pulling out all the fan coils? We have made it work by working with the manufacturer to get the elements to all work together.”
Phil Draper ends the conversation with another example of the benefits of full collaboration with a client – this time at a distinctly smaller scale than the London work. “We have been working with an Anglesey adventure centre, housing around 45 people, on a net zero project. Together with the manufacturer Mixergy, we have been able to complete the entire project for the cost the client was quoted by a local consultant for a three-phase electrical upgrade alone. It is all about encouraging the client to embrace a culture change.”
