Indoor air quality is a growing issue

A poor air quality can affect the health but also the productivity of the building users. Generally designers of buildings put very little effort on this topic and focus on energy issues. Construction companies are not quite familiar with this issue and answers are missing in order to help them.

In particular, there is a lack of dynamic tools which can manage real-time monitoring of chemical pollution. The current 2-step method that requires sampling in the building and then an analysis in a lab are not suitable for a general use in building, a continuous monitoring as for energy.

Real-time monitoring of indoor air quality is also relevant for the construction process quality, in particular in the case of refurbishment in occupied site and for commissioning activities.

BLUE Industry and Science (project partner) has developed the first analyzer dedicated to real-time measurement of Indoor Air Quality.

The ambition of Built2Spec is to optimise this solution by:

  • developing a truly portable version of this analyzer, designed and adapted for field operation by a construction technician (non-specialist).
  • updating this analyzer with other specific sensors for particulate matters
  • building a unique indicator to manage all collected data and give a simple information to the user.

Objectives of Built2Spec:

  • Develop a portable version
  • Update the analyzer for particular matters
  • Manage all collected data
Blue Analyzer © Blue Industry and Science

Reports

 Indoor Air Quality Specifications

 

Nobatek and Blue Industry and Science aimed at facilitating the measurements of indoor air quality onsite. Therefore, they related the information coming from the analyser to the user in an explicit way so that everyone could use the indoor air analyser onsite,  interpret the results and take the appropriate measures. To reach this objective, the partners set specifications for the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) analyser, the indicators, the interface, and the BIM platform. More information can be found in the report on Indoor Air Quality Specifications below.

Indoor Air Quality Indicators

 

In this report, Nobatek defines indicators and group indicators (indexes) which allow to assess the indoor air quality. The values measured by the analyzer will be then compared to the indicators value in order to assign the test results to either “FAIL” or “PASS”.

More information can be found in the report on Indoor Air Quality Indicators below.