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| Formation | 1921; 104 years ago (1921) |
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TheBuilding Research Establishment (BRE) is a centre ofbuilding science in the United Kingdom, owned by charitable organisation the BRE Trust. It is a formerUK government national laboratory, previously called Building Research Station (BRS), that wasprivatised in 1997. BRE provides research, advice, training, testing, certification and standards for bothpublic andprivate sector organisations in the UK and abroad. It has its headquarters inGarston, Hertfordshire, England, with regional sites inGlasgow,Swansea, the US, India, the Middle East and China.[1]
BRE is funded with income from commissioned research, commercial programmes and by a number of digital tools for use in the construction sector.
The Building Research Establishment is owned by theBRE Trust, a registered charity that works to support research and education in the built environment. All of the profits accrued by BRE are passed to the trust and are used to fund new research and education programmes designed to meet the trust's goal of promoting safety andsustainability.
Over the last 20 years[when?] the BRE Trust has funded 117 PhDs on a total research programme of £15m, with other funding levered into the sector as a whole from research councils andEuropean Union research sources.
The BRE Trust also financially supports five university Centres of Excellence. One of the first centres established was at theUniversity of Edinburgh in 2004, a research and education programme on fire safety engineering. The other centres are inStrathclyde (energy utilisation),Bath (construction materials),Cardiff (sustainable engineering), andBrasília (integrated and sustainable communities).
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BRE was founded in 1921 as theBuilding Research Board[4] at East Acton as part of theBritish Civil Service, as an effort to improve the quality ofhousing in the United Kingdom.[5]
During theSecond World War, it was involved in the confidential research and development of thebouncing bomb for use against theMöhne Dam in theDambusters Raid of 1943[6] A small scale model of the dam used for testing can still be found at the Centre in Garston, Watford, today.
BRE has an archive and some account of its history online.[7]
In the 1950s, BRE's applied research was a pioneer in energy efficiency of buildings and their use (such as curtaining windows and draught reduction). It also embraced collaborative research.[8] BRE was a founding member in 1976 ofBSRIA, the Building Services Research and Information Association and theUK Green Building Council (UKGBC) in 2007.
Having subsumed a number of other government organisations over the years, including the former Fire Research Station, and thePrinces Risborough Laboratory, it was givenexecutive agency status in 1990, before beingprivatised by theDepartment of the Environment on 19 March 1997.[9]
From 1 January 2013, BRE took over the management of the UK and Ireland chapter ofBuildingSMART.[10] In 2017, this responsibility was passed to the UK BIM Alliance (now known as Nima).[11]
In August 2016,Constructing Excellence merged with BRE, with BRE undertaking to maintain the CE's brands and functions.[12]
Since theGrenfell Tower fire in June 2017, BRE has been criticised for holding poor fire safety standards, all the while via reviewing cases like that of Grenfell.[13][14][15] The final (phase 2) report of theGrenfell Tower Inquiry, published in September 2024, was critical of BRE suggesting its once recognised international status as a leader in fire safety had been compromised, talking of a "desire to put BRE's status in the industry and commercial position ahead of considerations of public safety."[16] Members of theHouse of Lords called for BRE to be stripped of its responsibility to certifymodern methods of construction, following the Grenfell Inquiry criticism.[17] BRE defended its role, rejected claims it was not impartial and insisting its testing approach was robust.[17]
51°42′00″N0°22′25″W / 51.7001°N 0.3737°W /51.7001; -0.3737 (BRE)
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