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The purpose of the competition is to promote awareness of a new breed of optimisation tools which can help with decision making at any stage of the design process. These tools provide powerful techniques for identifying optimal designs that meet potentially conflicting design requirements such as minimising environmental impact while also minimising development costs and at the same time satisfying constraints such as providing minimum levels of occupant comfort.

Prizes will be awarded for the most cost effective and environmentally friendly design meeting a challenging functional and performance specification. The first prize will be 500 GBP cash plus an Advanced Simulation Package. Runner up prizes will also be provided.

The competition is open to all comers including professional consultants, academics and students and we particularly support use of the competition as part of University building energy modelling teaching modules.
Participants will get advance access to the DesignBuilder Optimisation software, which will help give them the best possible chance of winning the competition. Optimisation requires many hundreds of simulations to be carried out to perform an accurate analysis. In DesignBuilder these simulations can be run in parallel on your local machine, on a network server or for the fastest results over the internet on the De Montfort University high performance supercomputer. We expect many participants will take DMU up on their generous offer to use this powerful resource at no cost during the competition.

A free Webinar will be held on 14 January 2014 at 15:00 GMT to provide more detailed information on the competition and also on the new DesignBuilder Optimisation tools. Whether you are interested in taking part in the competition, or you would just like to know more about the latest optimisation tools, you are warmly invited to attend. Click on the link below to register:

https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/273603295

Andy Tindale