Problem Solving and Remedials
Synergy has built a strong reputation for competence, insight and experience within the industry. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from others' mistakes, and we have seen building systems fail in every conceivable way.
We are often asked to advise owners and end-users where systems are under-performing. This can be in a legal context, or simply where a client feels that an engineer might be the best person to consult when engineering systems go wrong.
Synergy practice the lost art of using the scientific method to determine what is actually happening in an underperforming system - Gather data/Form a theory/Devise a test to establish the validity of the theory/Carry out the test/Analyse the results (followed by 'Devise an alternative theory' if the results are not as predicted).
The last step is to devise a simple cost-effective way to rectify the problem, and this sometimes requires an innovative approach.
We frequently see disproportionately expensive 'tear-it-all-out-and-start-again' remedial proposals (sometimes developed by some of the most reputable firms) where the engineers have become so ingrained with the blame culture that they have seemingly lost their engineering perspective entirely.
Best Practice for Building Services Engineers is to design systems which work satisfactorily under nearly all circumstances. There is always an implicit pragmatic element to our design standards, such as designing for external temperatures only as low as -3°C or only as high as 29°C - and that is due to the high capital cost of designing for temperatures such as -13°C or 38°C (while they are by no means unknown in south-east England). It is universally accepted that the additional capital cost outweighs the benefits of having systems which can cope fully with these extremes.
The objective of remedial schemes can mutate into 'it drop-dead must work under all circumstances', resulting in wasted space, capital and energy.
Our motto with remedial measures is 'Every engineering problem has an affordable engineering solution'.
