Boiling point – why the UK’s overheating crisis is exposing a blind spot in building design
1 October 2026
As the UK experiences more frequent and intense periods of heat, the need for cooling and ventilation is increasingly at the forefront of the national conversation. But introducing more systems and specialist expertise also adds complexity to building services design. John Taylor explores the challenge of managing the systems and responsibilities involved in delivering climate-resilient buildings.
For years, overheating has been considered an acceptable risk in UK building design. Many UK buildings have no comfort cooling and those that do are often designed based on historic summer temperatures. After another exceptionally hot summer, the acceptability of that risk is being questioned. Building owners want confidence that occupants will be comfortable regardless of the weather.
The UK Health Security Agency recorded 1,311 heat-associated deaths during the summer of 2024.
Now, researchers estimate that the May/June 2026 heatwaves alone resulted in more than 2,700 excess deaths across England and Wales. The longer-term outlook is equally concerning. The Climate Change Committee has warned that annual heat-related deaths could rise from around 1,600 today to almost 11,000 by the 2050s without further adaptation.
There’s growing pressure to make our buildings more resilient. But doing so is not simply a case of specifying more cooling.
Coming together
Climate adaptation is changing what we need buildings to do. Cooling and ventilation strategies need to incorporate heat pumps, intelligent controls, fabric, glazing, shading and fire safety measures. Individually, these are familiar considerations for building services engineers. The challenge comes from bringing them together. Every additional system, discipline or specialist involved creates another interface, and it is often at those interfaces that problems arise.
Clear allocation of responsibility is essential, from establishing ownership of individual design elements to defining the information required between specialists. Ensuring different systems are effectively coordinated is vital. As the design develops, those responsibilities must remain clearly defined and understood across the project team.
Climate resilience is not only placing technical demands on our buildings, it’s also increasing the coordination demands placed on the teams designing them.
Information overload
The industry is not short of information. Digital design has transformed the quantity and sophistication of the data we produce and exchange. Drawings, models, schedules, trackers and common data environments give project teams access to more information than ever before. But having more information doesn’t automatically mean having greater clarity.
A technically detailed model can’t compensate for unclear ownership, nor can a project tracker resolve an interface between disciplines if responsibility for coordinating it hasn’t been defined.
This becomes particularly important as designs evolve. Responsibilities that appeared straightforward at concept stage can shift as specialist designers, manufacturers and additional consultants join the project. If the information defining those responsibilities doesn’t evolve with the design, gaps can quickly emerge.
The industry’s challenge, then, is not simply producing more information. It is ensuring that the right information is produced by the right people, at the right time, with clear ownership throughout the project lifecycle.
Who’s responsible?
There’s also a wider regulatory context. The Building Safety Act and subsequent changes to the
Building Regulations have placed greater emphasis on the quality, accuracy and traceability of
information throughout a building’s lifecycle. The duty holder establishes requirements around competence, cooperation and coordination.
Responsibility for design information needs to be as clear and traceable as the information itself. It’s not enough to know what decision was made; project teams also need to understand who was responsible for producing, coordinating and reviewing the information that informed it.
Climate adaptation adds to this complexity. Resilient buildings need greater specialist input and more interconnected systems, with building services running through and interacting with multiple elements of the building. This creates more interfaces across disciplines and demands closer coordination among architects, engineers, manufacturers, contractors, and operators.
But greater complexity isn’t necessarily a problem. The risk arises when the responsibilities created by that complexity aren’t clearly defined and managed.
Design frameworks
This is where established design frameworks, such as BSRIA’s BG6 Design Framework for Building Services, have an important role to play. BG6 provides a structured approach to defining and allocating design activities and information production across project stages. Rather than assuming everybody understands where one organisation’s responsibility ends and another begins, it provides a framework for establishing who leads, supports and reviews each activity. That distinction becomes increasingly valuable as project teams expand.
For climate-resilient buildings, that coordination is critical. A building’s ability to perform as intended depends on multiple systems and disciplines working together. If the interfaces between them are poorly coordinated, even well-designed solutions can fail to deliver the intended outcome.
Central role
There’s no single technology that will solve the UK’s overheating challenge. Different buildings, occupants and locations require different approaches, and building services engineers will play a central role in determining what those solutions look like.
But we should be wary of treating climate resilience purely as a specification exercise. Adding cooling, improving ventilation or introducing smarter controls will only take us so far if the processes behind their design and integration can’t keep pace.
If we want our buildings to be safe, comfortable and resilient as temperatures rise, we need to design resilience into the project process. Not just the building itself.
John Taylor
Publications manager & technical specialist at BSRIA
