Troup Bywaters + Anders (TB+A) is an engineering partnership delivering high-quality building services consultancy from eight offices across Europe.
The consultancy was founded in 1958 and has delivered projects across a wide range of sectors, including commercial, education, government, healthcare and residential. Some of its recent projects include Fleming House at Imperial College London, Convene at 22 Bishopsgate and Henrietta House in London.
We caught up with Paul Bradley, Partner at TB+A, to find out how the consultancy has adopted NBS Chorus and how it has benefited from using the platform to create project specifications.
Managing risk
‘We adopted Chorus gradually over the last few years but made the final transition to it being our principal specification tool in January 2022’, Paul said.
‘We’ve found that the use of the Masters feature helps us to keep a consistent approach across projects. Alongside the Notes feature, this helps us to manage risk on projects as it provides engineers with reliable and robust data to help build their specifications’.
The Masters feature enables users to build up a library of commonly used clauses tailored to their organization and clients, so that they can be instantly ready to use on new projects. Paul also highlighted Notes as a particularly useful feature, as it helps the team to disseminate knowledge within the project environment.
These features enable users to create a golden thread of information, which will run through the project’s life cycle and helps specifiers adhere to the latest building safety legislation.
Imperial College London, Fleming Library.
Working efficiently and collaboratively
Thanks to the collaborative features, NBS Chorus users have told us that they are able to create specifications up to 70% faster than with Microsoft Word or similar software, freeing up more time for design and consultation.
Paul highlighted NBS Chorus being cloud-based as a key benefit of the software, as it means that multiple users can be invited into the specification, and that the project can be accessed anywhere and on any device with internet access. Paul shared a recent example of how the platform enabled seamless collaboration between internal and external project team members.
Henrietta House, London.
‘Having a specification platform that is commonly used throughout the industry, and that is kept up to date with relevant standards, can only help to enable efficient project delivery.'
‘We recently completed the office design for a government department. The specifications for electrical, mechanical and public health systems needed to be completed quickly across the team that was located in different parts of the country, Paul said.
‘The core specifications were prepared from our Masters that set out the base requirements for various systems. System descriptions were easily added to Chorus. External project team members were invited into Chorus to review the specification once it was in an advanced stage of development. Having multiple users working on and reviewing the specification as it developed meant that the specification was completed in time to meet a tight schedule’.
Paul also pointed to the regular updates made to the technical content within NBS Chorus and the dedicated support and training provided by NBS to make sure that users are making the most of their subscription.
The NBS Academy provides expert guidance from its professionally accredited trainers in a variety of formats and across a broad number of topics to help you use the NBS platform as effectively as possible.
NBS also runs a webinar programme throughout the year, covering everything from relevant industry issues to new developments in NBS Chorus and NBS Source.
Find out more
To find out more about how NBS Chorus can help you to mitigate risk on projects by creating a golden thread of information, check out this article on why the specification process is more important than ever.
Get in touch
To discuss your project requirements and discover how NBS Chorus can help you, email info@theNBS.com or call 0345 456 9594.
