The meeting formally decided on the sad news that our partner Arup decided to withdraw from the consortium. This has led to a number of internal redistributions of work; fortunately we have been able to accommodate to the withdrawal, so that we are still able to deliver the results that we expected 18 months ago.

The first ‘real’ results of the STREAMER project are now becoming visible and it is obvious that this creates energy: a working piece of software always leads to new questions, new ideas and wishes for “more and better”. During the meeting, a lot of attention was paid to the Early Design Configurator that will greatly support architects to find energetically optimal floor plan layouts.
Another key result that receives a lot of attention is the STREAMER labels concept. These labels are used in the design rules that are executed by the Early Design Configurator and they capture requirements in a number of generic categories that can be handled much more easily in early design stages.

Many other topics are addressed, like the exact way to calculate Key Performance Indicators for building designs, the Participatory Design Process that is needed to efficiently gather all stakeholders’ views, and how energy simulations should be conducted.
An interesting aspect of having meetings at pilot sites is the opportunity for a site visit, where the challenges and solutions in the field of energy efficiency can be studied in practice. TRF has made an interesting move by adopting the Utility Wise system, which enables a detailed monitoring of energy usage of buildings that are in operation.