Minutes of the IBPSA England Board Meeting,
University College London, London, 8 July 2008

Attendees
Malcolm Cook, De Montfort University (Chair)
Dejan Mumovic, University College London (Host)
Mikkel Kragh, ARUP
Edward Murphy, Mot MacDonald
Michael Lim, Faber Maunsell
Jonathan Wright, Loughborough University
Simon Rees, De Montfort University
Pieter de Wilde, University of Plymouth (Secretary)

Apologies
Mike Davies, University College London
Ian Ward, University of Sheffield/BRE

Agenda
10:00 Welcome, installation of new Board
10:15 Review and present status of IBPSA-England
11:00 Software competition for BS09
13:00 Summary, and date + location of next meeting

Minutes
Malcolm welcomes everyone to the IBPSA-England Board meeting at UCL. He thanks Dejan for organising a fantastic event on Low Carbon Buildings the day before. He formally launches the 2008-2010 Board, thanks Ian Ward for his leadership over the past two years and for his role in starting IBPSA-England, and welcomes new Board members Edward Murphy and Michael Lim.

Low Carbon Building Symposium:
Dejan informs us that the symposium had about 160 visitors; it yielded in the order of 53 new IBPSA-England members (25% increase). Follow-up activities (needed in the context of the Urban Buzz Funding) will include the preparation of podcasts that will be available via the website. Dejan also suggest developing a broad ‘position paper’ on low carbon buildings, capitalising on the presentations and discussions held. There is some discussion on the Board on the actual status of such a paper, and whether or not this can be voiced as representing the opinion of IBPSA-England Board only, or the opinion of IBPSA-England as a whole. It is decided that Dejan will propose a framework for the paper which will be circulated amongst the Board before moving this forward.



Actions from previous meeting:
• Work on an article for the CIBSE Journal by Malcolm has not progressed, and is now overtaken by the joint symposium on Low Carbon Buildings. It is suggested to combine an intro to IBPSA-England and a report of the symposium in one article. Edward has contacts in BSJ who can be asked for their view on how to best take this forward.
• The proposal on EPSRC network funding was an action for Ian; Malcolm will contact Ian to ask for the status, and will inform the Board by 8 August.
• Urban Buzz Funding has been successfully secured by Dejan and Mike, and has contributed to the Low Carbon Building event.
• Options to review Plymouth conference papers in the CIBSE BSERT Journal have been reviewed by Pieter, and discussed with Simon. It was found that there was insufficient material to aim for a special issue. It is suggested by Jonathan to ask the authors of the few qualifying papers to write an article for the new IBPSA Journal of Building Performance Simulation. [Action Pieter]
• The organisation of a Northeast event in March 2008 has failed to materialize; however, there is a new contact in Newcastle (Miss Hamza Naveen) who might be willing to move things forward. [Malcolm to discuss with Hamza].

Review and present status of IBPSA-England:
(1) Membership
Currently the membership is in the order of 130 to 150 persons (not exactly known due to people changing post, students on the list, etc). It is suggested that we encourage members to keep IBPSA-England up-to-date by making a request to do so at the end of each email we send out. It is also suggested we might introduce a small annual fee for membership; payment and personal data updating could then go hand in hand.

(2) IBPSA-England Profile
Edward asks whether or not IBPSA-England has a clear strategy for development, similar to a business plan:
• Mission statement, objectives
• Target membership numbers in 5, 10 years
• Target number of events per year.

He is informed that IBPSA-England has a Charter as a basis, which contains some elements, but that we lack a written strategy. Malcolm will review the Charter and start an outline strategy document, which will contain:
1. The ambition to hold two events per year
2. To increase membership numbers (to be defined)
3. To make material from workshop, conferences etc available online
4. To develop and maintain links with special interest groups in other relevant organisations (e.g. CIBSE, RIBA, etc.) and to run events in collaboration.

Another issue of concern is communication with our members. Malcolm suggests looking for reasons to email our members, and has identified:
(a) Follow-up on UCL event, notifying members of podcasts
(b) Pointing out event x, y, z and linking via website
(c) Pointers to IBPSA-World newsletters, proceedings etc
(d) Reminder for BS09 abstracts (action Pieter in early August)
It is agreed that Dejan will be the central point for distributing email to our members. Job announcements will go on the website, not per email.

Mikkel points out that the website needs to attract more interest, and become a real point of reference.