Humans in Simulation: Fast Chat with David Coley

1. Having done a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics what initially sparked your interest in low carbon building design? I was working in a physics department in a research group that looked at energy in society and quickly realised that the largest single sector for carbon emissions was the built environment. this led me to study why buildings use energy and how to reduce it.
   

2. What’s it like being you? I quite like being me, although that sounds a little bit egotistical it's true! my career is going well, I have a wonderful home life and still enjoy rock climbing and mountaineering. One thing I've enjoyed greatly during my career is the way that I've been able to bring physics to a very practical subject - buildings.
   

3. What motivates you the most in your work? Probably my greatest motivation is the enjoyment of learning new things.
   

4. Who or what inspires you in your professional journey? One early inspiration was my science teacher. In our first few weeks of secondary school, he demonstrated, via a series of experiments, how the physical world could be understood. One of these experiments  was about measuring the size of a molecule simply by dropping a very small drop of oil onto water and measuring the diameter of the circle it created. Another one was an ancient, I believe Greek, idea of just thinking about the world around you in order to come to a conclusion. For example, when you place a drop of ink into a beaker of water, the ink spreads out through the fluid. It is hard to see how this is possible without the idea of atoms or something similar. Another was learning about passive house, and that it was quite possible to build near zero energy buildings in a way that actually worked on site.
   

5. What has been your biggest career challenge to date? My greatest career challenge has been realising what I'm good at and what I'm totally rubbish at. I know I seem to be good at research and producing papers and I now know that you really wouldn't want me to organise anything, particularly anything I'm not massively interested in.
   

6. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be? One thing that has always struck me is the way that architects will drive hundreds of kilometres to see if the final building meets what they had in their mind. However, engineers, on the whole, neglect to contact the facilities manager to find out if their energy predictions, temperatures etc match the simulations. This greatly contrasts with the interest surgeons have on the impact of their work.
   

7. What’s your favourite building in the world? I'm not sure I have a favourite building. I love the Taj Mahal visually, I love the Zion visitor centre for the way that it controls the temperature inside the building in a very aggressive setting. I've been particularly impressed by refugee shelters around the world, not only for the architecture and engineering that's gone into them, which is usually rather poor for various complex reasons, but also for the way that the occupants have taken what they've been given under very difficult circumstances and turned buildings into homes.
   

8. Which famous building do you most dislike? Any building that uses more than 15 kilowatt hours per metre squared per annum for heating or cooling.
   

9. What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in sustainable building design? I'm not sure what the big breakthrough will be, but a breakthrough would be large numbers of near zero energy buildings being rolled out across the world. So maybe having an understanding of why exactly we haven't already done this, being we do know how to produce them, but seem to regularly fail to do so.
   

10. What trait do you most dislike in yourself? And in other people? One obvious failing in myself is one of attention to the details. I tend to get very excited, pursue an answer and then fail to make the most of it. In short, I fail to finish things. In others, and this has nothing to do with work and buildings, I think it is the fact that most of us fail to realise that we only have 4000 weeks on this planet and that we should make the most of those. For those that have had a reasonably good upbringing in a reasonably good and wealthy society the world is an oyster. Yet I see around me many people who don't make the most of that, which saddens me.
    

11. What’s your most prized possession? If I subvert the question slightly and remove the word possession, the most prized thing in the world is my wife Helen.
    

12. What would your superpower be? I'm not sure if this counts as a superpower, but somehow, getting people to build buildings in most of the world that simply don't need external energy systems to moderate their internal conditions. In many ways, this isn't even a superpower, but for reasons I don't understand, we just keep failing to deliver. For example, at my University we have a very expensive new School of Management. The area weighted U-value of the main facade is the same as a 1960s house. In this case, the reason is the large area of glass. How this is possible... I don't understand. In 1909, the Wright brothers made their first flight; 60 years later we had the first human landings on the moon. That's the kind of progress you get out of team mechanical engineering. Yet, our new buildings today use approximately the same energy as buildings from 1909.
    

13. Do you have a life philosophy? I'm not sure it counts as a philosophy but a focus on what to do with your 4000 weeks - which in my case is now down to a considerably smaller number is a great starting point.
    

14. Most helpful advice you were given? I really can't think of much advice that I've ever been given. And I think this says something about our society, and that we are slightly embarrassed about giving advice to others, but I know what advice I would give to a young person. That would be to listen to Tim Minchin’s honouree graduation speech from the university of Western Australia.
    

15. What advice would you give to aspiring modellers just starting out in this field? To be more scientific, i.e., to check their results whenever simple and cheap to do, you need that feedback from the real building. You predicted how windows would be used, what temperatures would be, what energy would be used. You need to check as often as possible that this is so. Often it won't be. There's not a lot you can now do because the building has been built, but you will greatly improve your ability to deliver correctly the next building.