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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/N509000/1
Title: WLP+ (Whole Life Performance Plus)
Principal Investigator: Gupta, Professor R
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
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
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Building Ops & Management Energy Efficiency
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Construction Energy
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
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.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
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Summary
Date Materialised
Sectors submitted by the Researcher
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Project URL:  
Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.brookes.ac.uk