Overview

Centre for Energy and the Environment

Andrew specialises in the monitoring of energy consumption and other environmental parameters in buildings.  By evaluating performance against expectations his results have been used to manage energy consumption and inform future building designs.  He advises the University of Exeter on their internal submetering systems and acts as commissioning engineer for these systems.  He has conducted detailed investigations of energy consumption in various university buildings and advised on energy reduction measures.  He also conducts many short-term building monitoring projects for local authorities in the South West of England, including the year-on-year energy and thermal performance of Montgomery Primary School (a zero carbon Passivhaus design), the performance of biomass boiler installations and monitoring to inform the design of new heat generation plant and a replacement datacentre for Exeter civic centre.  He was involved in a DECC-funded project at Cranbrook evaluating the integration of solar thermal and heat pump technologies into district heating schemes.  

Andrew is a member of the Institute of Acoustics and the Institute of Sound and Communications Engineers and conducts on-site acoustic testing and provides acoustic design and remediation advice for a range of building types including education, industrial, community, healthcare and residential developments, and places of worship. He has presented papers to national and branch meetings of the Institute of Acoustics. These have included papers on soundfield systems in classrooms (speech intelligibility measurements and modelling), the acoustics of relocatable classrooms and the development of audio simulation tools.

Andrew also has skills in Geographical Information Systems and computer programming in C++, Basic and MATLAB and has provided analyses of near gas grid properties without gas connections for grant fund targeting and transport emissions analyses for Teignbridge Council’s new homes planning policy.

Key Skills

• Building Acoustics including theoretical performance of buildings, on-site measurement and analysis
• Acoustic modelling of buildings using CATT acoustic, Bastian and Insul
• Energy monitoring in buildings to assess in-use performance
• Thermal comfort and air quality in buildings including both theoretical and in-use performance
• Acoustic testing to Building Bulletin 93 and Approved Document E

Selected project experience

• Review of thermal and acoustic performance of recent school building projects for Cornwall County Council.
• Year-on-year energy performance monitoring of Montgomery Primary School, a zero carbon Passivhaus design
• Commissioning, fault finding, and data analysis for the University of Exeter's submetering systems
• Laboratory testing of the acoustic performance of perimeter and threshold door seals.
• Development of simple software tools for architects to calculate reverberation times and airborne and impact sound insulation, including audio simulation of reverberation and sound insulation.
• Development of a computer-based screening tool (together with hardware specification) to conduct simplified acoustic measurements of reverberation and sound insulation, for the States of Jersey Public Services Department.
• Numerous Building Bulletin 93 compliance assessments of school buildings, including several music suites.
• Use of CATT Acoustics and Raynoise to assess flutter echoes in school halls, open-plan resource areas in schools and the speech intelligibility of sound amplification systems.
• Site evaluation of speech intelligibility of classroom soundfield systems.
• Evaluation of speech intelligibility of audio conferencing systems in a council chamber and committee rooms.
• BS4142 assessments of noise sources including military installations, entertainment venues and building services.
• Post-construction acoustics testing of numerous educational buildings to investigate reported shortcomings.
• Approved Document E residential pre-completion acoustic testing.
• Installation of temporary sound amplification systems for musical, theatrical and spoken word events. Specification of system upgrades and fault investigation

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Publications

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| 2018 | 2015 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 | 2006 |

2018

• Mitchell TA, Lash D. (2018) Predicting and Monitoring School Energy Use to Achieve Performance Targets, CIBSE Technical Symposium 2018, London, 12th - 13th Apr 2018, Proceedings of the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers.

2015

• Parkin A, Mitchell A, Coley D. (2015) A new way of thinking about environmental building standards: Developing and demonstrating a client-led zero-energy standard, Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, DOI:10.1177/0143624415615328.

2010

• Wood MJ, Coley DA, Mitchell TA. (2010) Case study evaluations on the influence of BB 93 on the acoustic design of school buildings, Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, volume 32, no. PART 3, pages 458-464.
• Mitchell TA. (2010) Lessons learned from acoustic testing in schools in the south-west of England, Euronoise 2010, Edinburgh, 26th - 28th Oct 2010. [PDF]

2009

• Mitchell TA. (2009) Lessons learned from acoustic testing in schools in the south-west of England, 8th European Conference on Noise Control 2009, EURONOISE 2009 - Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, volume 31, no. PART 3.

2007

• Mitchell TA. (2007) Soundfield Systems in Classrooms, Institute of Acoustics Spring Conference 2007, Cambridge, 24th - 25th Apr 2007. [PDF]

2006

• Mitchell TA. (2006) The Acoustic Performance of Temporary School Classrooms, Institute of Acoustics Autumn Conference, Southampton, 3rd - 4th Apr 2006. [PDF]

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