A wide range of interesting articles that help you make informed decisions and deliver the best projects for your clients authored by our team of NBS subject specialists and construction industry contributors.
Sustainability
NBS Guide: Embodied Carbon Calculations
Learn how to align your carbon assessments with BIM workflows. This guide to Embodied Carbon Calculations, developed by NBS and Circular Ecology, sets out a practical, standardised approach to calculating the embodied carbon of building materials and products, and how to apply this data to BIM objects.
Must Reads
The hidden cost of compliance: why architects are demanding a new era of product transparency
Few pieces of legislation have reshaped the UK construction industry as significantly as the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA). Introduced to improve accountability, traceability and safety standards ...
Design and Specification
Brick slip cladding systems – the need for robust specification
This article from the NBS technical team outlines specification for brick slip technology, including history, technology, design, safety and testing.
When product data creates risk, AluK delivers the clarity and support architects need
The need to build more homes, more quickly, has not changed. If anything, the pressure has intensified. However, the conversation around Modern Methods of Construction has evolved.
The new uniclass work sections table
Uniclass is set to change, including Table J – the Common Arrangement of Works Sections (CAWS). Here John Gelder, Head of content development and sustainability, outlines the replacement for CAWS.
Design and SpecificationUniclass
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
In this article, John Gelder explores substitution, the use of 'or equal' and its ilk, and 'deemed-to-comply' specifications, and makes a few suggestions.
Design and SpecificationSpecification
Specifying for sports
Though most fabric and services systems and products can be used in facilities of all types, some are specific to a particular facility. So where does a specifier go for neutral authoritative ...
Design and Specification
A century of building specification works
Advice on specifying has a long history, beginning perhaps with 'On Architecture' by the Roman architect Vitruvius (24 BC). However, it has usually only been covered incidentally in works on other ...
Design and SpecificationSpecification
An inspector calls
Following our article on specification, or lack of it, at Ian McGlinn's Maison d'Or 'Yes! We have no specifications', John Gelder looks at what the case tells us about inspection.
Design and Specification
Yes! We have no specifications
Like Nero's Domus Aurea, little remains of Ian McGlinn's Maison d'Or – though a legal (rather than archaeological) legacy lives on. John Gelder looks at what this legacy tells us about specification.
Design and SpecificationSpecification
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Reclassification
Many countries have classification systems for construction work. These are reviewed regularly, occasionally resulting in a radical reclassification – the February ICIS Newsletter described new ...
UniclassClassification
Ban the ban: materials blacklists
We have recently had a couple of queries about materials blacklists, which we had thought were a thing of the past. Clearly this is not the case, so John Gelder, Content development manager, revisits ...
Design and SpecificationConstruction Products
Specifying colour
The visible electromagnetic spectrum ranges between about 400 nm (violet) and 700 nm (red). In building, colours are rarely pure spectral colours (like the yellow from low pressure sodium vapour ...
Design and SpecificationSpecification
Education checklist - Lecture theatres
A lot of teaching goes on in lecture theatres, but how much learning? A 1999 study by David Fleming, now at Northumbria University, and John Storr, at Sheffield Hallam University, explored how ...
Design and Specification
Public sector building: adaptable housing for special needs
Adaptable housing is a subset of the open building philosophy (1) which focuses on designing housing so it is flexible enough to accommodate future special needs users. This ties into the concept of ...
