| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/N509000/1 |
| Title: |
WLP+ (Whole Life Performance Plus) |
| Principal Investigator: |
Gupta, Professor R |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Faculty of Tech, Design and Environment |
| Organisation: |
Oxford Brookes University |
| Scheme: |
Technology Programme |
| Starts: |
01 February 2016 |
Ends: |
31 January 2019 |
Value (£): |
150,017
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Building Ops & Management |
Energy Efficiency |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
Studies from academic literature have demonstrated that staff productivity can be increased by up to 20% by improving
Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) such as temperature control, lighting and indoor air quality. The Whole Life
Performance Plus (WLP+) project will deliver a proven methodology for defining and measuring worker productivity, a
statistically proven model of IEQ for improving worker productivity, a means of identifying poor office environments, a
methodology for reconfiguring poor office environments to make them more productive and a control system for optimising
IEQ in offices in real time. Our approach will also allow performance data from many buildings to be collected from our
control system which will sit over and integrate with existing building management and control systems.
The goal of the WLP+ project consortium is to enable commercial building owners to increase staff productivity by 10%
while reducing energy use by 30%; targets that we believe are achievable and realistic, based on existing evidence. Since
expenditure on staff is at least 40 times higher than expenditure on energy, this offers a strong business case for the WLP+
user. The WLP+ project will develop and demonstrate empirically a link between IEQ and staff productivity in contact (call)
centres and professional business services buildings where large volumes of staff utilisation, productivity and absenteeism
data are available. The project will then resolve how the IEQ model can be used to monitor and control building
management and other building control systems to deliver these optimised IEQ conditions over the course of a working day
for minimum energy input. The WLP+ software solution will dynamically control commercial buildings and identify
interventions that are required for clients to optimise their working environments and minimise their building energy use.
Our target market consists of three customers: end user owners, organisations that own and use their buildings, landlords
& developers, who build, manage and rent space to tenants and tenants who rent and use space from landlords. Each
market segment is different because of their economic drivers and ability to change or reconfigure their space.
The outcome of the project will be the creation of commercial software tool and consultancy offering, creating a business
for improving staff productivity.
The project consortium is led by an SME (LCMB), working in partnership with a major building occupier/owners (Kings
College and clients of Emcor FM), dissemination partners (British Council for Offices and Constructing Excellence), and a
University (Oxford Brookes University (OBU)). The project team brings together highly qualified and specialised individuals
with progressive end users to combine cutting edge academic knowledge, data management skills and business
intelligence that goes beyond the benefits each individual partner could achieve in isolation.
The project will include seven work packages (WPs):
- WP1: Project management and reporting
- WP2: Technical definition of the IEQ parameters, staff productivity and energy metrics using available datasets
- WP3: Baseline data capture on IEQ, productivity and energy use.
- WP4: Deploy improvement interventions to modify IEQ for enhancing productivity and reducing energy use in the test-bed
are.
- WP5: Software development of WLP+ protocol interface for deployment in building control and management systems of
future projects.
- WP6: Testing, validation and refinement of software tool by deploying in a case study commercial office building.
- WP7: Dissemination and knowledge exchange.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.brookes.ac.uk |