Knowledge

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.

Specifications - the views from the industry

The findings in the NBS Specification Report 2017 provide us with a good understanding when it comes to the industry's experience of specifications and future expectations. Clearly, specifications ...

Design and SpecificationSpecification
NBS-LCA

Reduce embodied carbon from the start

Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.

The alternative to last-minute specification writing

Challenges A specification is a key contract document, typically produced during the technical design stage of a project. It is issued as part of the tender documentation and used throughout the ...

Design and SpecificationSpecification

Five trends to watch in the NBS National BIM Survey 2017

What is the NBS National BIM Survey? Over the last seven years the NBS National BIM Survey (and the resulting NBS National BIM Report) has become an essential resource for construction professionals ...

Design and SpecificationSustainability

The best apps for construction

What are you go-to apps for creativity, productivity and project design? What digital tools do you rely on on the construction site? We've trawled the app marketplaces for essential software for ...

Design and SpecificationDigital Transformation

Glorious graphene and its revolutionary applications for construction

Graphene has a ticklist of desirable properties that firmly cement its reputation as a true 'material of the future'. It's just about the strongest, thinnest, lightest, conductive material ever ...

Design and SpecificationDigital Transformation

What is a BIM Execution Plan (BEP)?

The success of your BIM project is down, in no small part, to developing an effective BIM Execution Plan.

Digital Transformation

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4D Hyperlocal - A cultural toolkit for the open-source city

4D Hyperlocal: A Cultural Toolkit for the Open-Source City Guest edited by Lucy Bullivant

Design and SpecificationSustainability

The NBS guide to asbestos

Asbestos is a naturally-occurring fibrous rock that has insulative, fire protection and corrosive protection properties and was widely used within homes and commercial buildings from the 1950s to the ...

Standards and RegulationsConstruction Products

Has bendable concrete cracked the maintenance burden?

Billions of pounds are spent every year dealing with the resulting cracks and, in recent years, scientists have been experimenting with a range of self-healing technologies. Now researchers in ...

Design and SpecificationSustainability

Emergency safety lighting - revisions to BS 5266

What is BS 5266? BS 5266 gives gives detailed guidance on the application and practice of emergency lighting. The standard’s recommendations have been drawn up to encourage uniformity of application, ...

Design and SpecificationStandards and Regulations

Where to start with BIM

Update: Since this article was first written, all the content from the NBS National BIM Library has moved across to NBS Source. ...

Digital Transformation

The 20th century saw a 23 fold increase in natural resources used for building

That's according to research from Heinz Schandl and Fridolin Krausmann.

SustainabilityConstruction Products