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Sustainable specification in the public sector

by John Gelder
RIBAE Head of content development and sustainability

This short article focuses on some issues particular to specification in the public sector, and is based on a presentation made at the SCALA/SCEME Study Day at Bristol on 3 June 2011.

Project timeline

Local Authorities and other public works agencies commission, design, build and occupy buildings – they are engaged in the entire project timeline, from inception to eventual demolition. The new NBS (due out in 2012) will provide for specification (by outline and performance, including environmental performance) of an object hierarchy, which maps loosely to the project timeline. In this hierarchy facilities comprise buildings, buildings comprise systems, and systems comprise products:

Facilities (not for release in 2012) = RIBA Stage A
Buildings & landscape = RIBA Stages B+C
Systems = RIBA Stages D+E
Products = RIBA Stage F.

The new NBS will also provide functionality for Stages beyond F (e.g. contractor's reporting tools), and a subsection in each system section for the specification of system facility management (i.e. system operation, maintenance, alteration and demolition). Content and functionality for all Stages, but particularly Stages A-C and beyond F, will be developed further post-launch. This should prove enormously useful to public works agencies.

Multidisciplinary working

Many public works agencies subscribe to NBS, for use by their architects, engineers, landscape architects, M&E engineers, QSs and other construction disciplines. The new NBS will enhance multi-disciplinary working through:

Rebundling of NBS Building content (tailored to different disciplines)
Support for interoperability (e.g. exchange and mark-up of files) between bundles
Ability to buy individual sections from other bundles
A fully consistent approach to specification across all disciplines (e.g. same section structure).

Bundles will include the existing NBS Landscape and NBS Engineering Services, and new structural and architectural bundles and possibly, in the future, a project management bundle.

Public sector specification

NBS comes in two flavours – generic and branded (NBS Plus). The former is better suited to public sector procurement, for which specification by brand is generally barred under the Public Contracts Regulations 2006 (above a defined financial threshold). You might like to refer to previous articles where this issue has been explored fully (Revisiting EU Directive 2004/18/EC, and The propriety of public procurement).

It is expected that the new NBS will add 'or equivalent' as required by these Regulations, where standards and brands are specified, at the press of a button. It will also clearly distinguish between generic and branded system and product clauses.

Sustainability

The Regulations actually mandate the specification of 'levels of environmental performance'. As noted above, the new NBS will deal with this at each level in the object hierarchy.

The Regulations also explicitly permit reference in contract specifications to 'eco-labels'. Environmental third-party product certification schemes (not all of which are eco-labels) come in several types, described in the article Sustainability and the new NBS (i). Eco-labels are not cited in current NBS, but we expect to cite them in the new NBS in due course, against the keyword 'Third party product certification'.

NBS has long addressed sustainability (perhaps beginning with The greening report by ECD in 1997). Over recent years our sustainability content has been enhanced through introduction of prompts for recycled content (using percentage values from WRAP's Choosing construction products), and through a BREEAM review of the entire NBS suite by our in-house BREEAM Assessors. NBS also offers direct links (to NBS Building Regulations) to guidance that is deemed-to-satisfy the Building Regulations, such as the E&W Approved Documents, several of which deal with aspects of sustainability (e.g. AD L1A&B and AD L2A&B).

The new NBS will take this further by:

enabling the preparation of a 'recycled content' report
Dealing with specification of BREEAM issues at whole-building level and at system level (and eventually at facility level)
Providing a consistent and thorough approach to thermal and other performance issues across all systems
Providing new technical sections on 'sustainable' systems, beginning with rammed earth walling, sustainable urban drainage and vertical planting systems (ii).

A prerequisite for the BREEAM extension is that we implement BREEAM 2011, which replaced BREEAM 2008 on 1 July, as soon as possible.

Conclusion

NBS is part of the furniture in most Local Authorities. It is hoped that this article will encourage Local Authority architects and others to make the most of the new NBS, by showing how it will help with working along the timeline, multi-disciplinary work, compliance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2006, and sustainability.

Notes

i This article outlines several other proposals for NBS in the area of sustainability, including system outline clause functionality, more BREAM development, environmental management systems, and simulations.

ii 'Sustainable' system and product sections in the current NBS include straw bale walling, thatch roofing, green roofing, water reclamation, biogas supply, liquid biofuel supply, combined heat and power units, solar collectors, small-scale wind generation, and photovoltaics.