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
specification
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.
specification
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.
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
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
Specification is an essential part of the design process. Unfortunately, for most engineers, it is the least enjoyed task. This often results in specifications of inferior quality. If a specification ...
Design and SpecificationSpecification
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
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 ...
