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
climate-change
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.
climate-change
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 retrofit standards framework
While new builds are designed to be energy-efficient from the outset, most of the building stock we have existed before modern energy-efficiency home standards were introduced. This is true now and ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
What we learnt at Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival 2018
In 2017 Northumbrian Water Group’s first Innovation Festival landed in the North East, and this year it was bigger and better than ever.
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Government strategies to decrease the production of carbon emissions
Through Government authority, policies can ensure that reducing carbon emissions is a matter of law and all within the UK must comply. Some of the objectives set out by the Government include ...
SustainabilityStandards and Regulations
BS 8001 and embracing the circular economy
Currently, the world’s economy relies primarily on a “take, make, dispose” linear model that requires access to large quantities of cheap and accessible materials and energy and large areas in which ...
SustainabilityConstruction Products
Designing homes for water efficiency
The UK climate makes it easy to think of water as a plentiful resource that we don't need to worry about. This couldn't be further from the truth - according to Waterwise the UK has less available ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Green offices make for healthy, happy and more productive staff
Employers, building owners, designers and developers throughout the world are showing that it pays to invest in greener offices that keep their occupants healthy and happy.
Design and SpecificationSustainability
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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
Global renewables capacity exceeds coal
Global capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources has, for the first time, overtaken coal according to a new study from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Design and SpecificationSustainability
British cities rank in 2016 Sustainable Cities list
London has been ranked as the fifth most sustainable city in the world in the 2016 Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index.
SustainabilityClimate change
Digestive 'smart' bricks set to power homes and recycle waste water
A new project to transform building facades into ‘biological computers’ made up of ‘digestive’ bricks that can create useful products from waste has been launched at Newcastle University.
Design and SpecificationSustainability
How your garden could help stop your city flooding
Urban flooding represents the most common yet severe environmental threat to cities and towns worldwide. Future changes in rainfall extremes are likely to increase this threat, even in areas that ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
What makes a passivhaus?
In recent years the term ‘Passivhaus’ has become a byword for an ‘eco-friendly’ dwelling. The evolution of the energy-saving home has taken leads from Scandinavian and mainland European ...
