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.
Discover how specification can support BREEAM New Construction V7, with practical guidance from NBS and BRE on assessment requirements, evidence and more sustainable project outcomes.
With tightening regulations and growing client demand, the construction industry is under increasing pressure to demonstrate measurable progress against carbon reduction targets. For specifiers, that ...
Because of how they are used, kitchens and bathrooms experience more moisture, more contact, and more ongoing maintenance. Standard emulsions are not designed for this level of use. Over time, ...
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 ...
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.
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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.
Many countries have classification systems for construction work. These are reviewed regularly, occasionally resulting in a radical reclassification – the February ICIS Newsletter described new ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...