The Future of Building Services Education, R&D, and Diversity

The next generation of net-zero buildings will succeed or fail on the calibre, curiosity and diversity of the engineers who design, operate and retrofit them. That reality framed the “Future of Building Services Education, R&D, and Diversity” session at the 2025 CIBSE IBPSA-England Technical Symposium. Two complementary papers took centre stage: one asked whether today’s university programmes produce graduates ready for industry pressures; the other exposed how under-representation and unconscious bias still throttle talent pipelines.

Taken together, they remind us that knowledge, skills and behaviours are inseparable from equity and inclusion. This article distils the findings, extracts practical lessons for consultants and estates teams, and shows how VEXO International’s proven technologies translate educational insight into measurable energy and carbon savings on live projects.

Are We Building Building Services Engineers? – Simon Ho & Chris Puttick (UWE)

Ho and Puttick surveyed 28 stakeholders (seven current students, fifteen recent graduates and six employers) to see whether university curricula align with industry reality (Ho & Puttick, 2025). On a Likert scale of 0–5, students rated their own knowledge at 4.43 and behaviours at 4.29, while employers scored new hires notably lower on knowledge (3.3) but higher on practical skills (4.0). The mismatch tightens once graduates enter practice: only 80% felt “probably or definitely” ready, down from 85% of students. Employers praised digital literacy and enthusiasm yet warned of patchy fundamentals in hydronics, heat-transfer and whole-life carbon analysis.

The authors conclude that soft-skill training, live project integration and explicit behaviour assessment must migrate from “extra” to “essential.” Industry liaison panels, programme refresh cycles and guest lecturers are helpful but only if accompanied by data-driven tracking of knowledge-skill-behaviour (KSB) outcomes.

Key Takeaways

Apparent KSB alignment masks a knowledge confidence gap that appears after graduation.
Employers value “willingness to learn” and hydronic fundamentals over niche software skills.
Students underestimate the importance of interpersonal communication and contract literacy.
Periodic curriculum reviews should use employer-validated metrics, not just academic opinion.

VEXO’s experience echoes Ho’s findings: poor understanding of hydronic health translates directly into higher pump energy and oversized boilers. X-POT filtration and X-PO inhibitors give facilities teams “living lab” evidence they can feed back to universities, while S-BMS dashboards visualise how behaviour-based set-point changes cut heating energy by up to 36 % in low-temperature systems. Embedding such real-world datasets into coursework would shrink the graduate readiness gap immediately.

Under-representation of Ethnic Minorities in the Buildings Sector – Mehreen Gul et al. (Heriot-Watt/Aston)

Gul and colleagues conducted forty one-to-one interviews (fifteen focused on the buildings sector) to map career barriers, ambitions and enablers for ethnic-minority professionals (Gul et al., 2025). Only 7 of 40 hires made by the six employer respondents came from CIBSE-accredited courses, and senior leadership remains overwhelmingly white and male. Interviewees reported three recurrent obstacles:

Career ambitions diverged sharply between academia (publishing and grant success) and industry (Chartered Engineer status, project delivery). Respondents praised tailored mentoring, role-model visibility and structured routes to chartership as powerful enablers, yet warned that generic diversity workshops move the needle little. The paper calls for evidence-based EDI policies, transparent promotion criteria and short-term mentoring assignments tied to specific competencies.

Key Takeaway

Ethnic-minority engineers still expend extra cognitive and emotional labour to “fit in”.
Lack of diverse role models perpetuates self-selection out of leadership tracks.
Chartered Engineer pathways can level the playing field when entry requirements and sponsorship are explicit.
Organisations must pair EDI commitments with measurable KPIs and budgeted support (e.g., writing coaches, conference funding).

High-performing HVAC systems depend on inclusive teams that blend field craft, data science and behavioural insight. VEXO sponsors CPD sessions and funds PhD students to widen participation. By giving junior engineers access to VEXO’s energy saving solutions, teachers can assign evidence-rich micro-projects that build both competence and confidence — key antidotes to the “censoring-to-assimilation” strategy Gul documents.

Ready to Close the Skills & Diversity Gap?

VEXO partners with universities, FM teams and MEP consultants to embed hydronic health and smart-data analytics into teaching labs, pilot projects and campus retrofits. Share your design brief or request a live demo and start converting insight into kilowatt-hour savings today.