Water

Water studies the use, quality and risk of water in and around buildings: drinking-water safety (legionella control), water use and reuse, and the load of rainwater on sewer systems and surroundings. It combines public-health knowledge with technical management.

Legionella control is in many jurisdictions a statutory duty with direct health risk on failure, and FM typically executes the control plan. Water use is also a growing cost item and increasingly part of sustainability reporting.

• Is the legionella control plan current for the present pipework configuration, including temporarily unused parts of the building?
• Where is water reuse technically and hygienically justified, and where not?

• National drinking-water regulation and legionella standards (jurisdiction-dependent); WHO drinking-water quality guidelines.

• Vacancy or low occupancy raises legionella risk through stagnant water; the control plan must be adjusted for that, not kept as it was before the vacancy.

• Technical management of sanitary installations

• Legionella control plan and sampling

• In-house (retained) delivery organisation

  Direct knowledge of occupancy patterns helps keep the control plan current.

• National legionella legislation (jurisdiction-dependent); no uniform international ISO standard for legionella control.

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• A control plan from the handover phase kept unchanged after a renovation altered the pipework configuration.

Climate change raises both the risk of peak rainwater load and periods of water scarcity; building management increasingly has to be designed for both extremes at once, and the methodology for doing so is still very much developing.

• WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality.