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
sustainability
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.
sustainability
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 Low Carbon Construction Action Plan
This programme provides a heads-up on the Government’s Low Carbon Construction Action Plan, which was launched by construction Minister Mark Prisk in June 2011. The Plan is designed to provide a ...
SustainabilityVideo
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
Against a backdrop of site footage, Amazonails founder, Barbara Jones explains the various preparations made before the first bale is secured to the ladder plate and the process of laying the wall begins in earnest
SustainabilityVideo
Code for Sustainable Homes – Health and wellbeing
This programme takes a look at 'Health and wellbeing' – Category 7 in the Code for Sustainable Homes. This category is formed of four parts – daylighting, sound insulation, private space (gardens, patios, etc), and lifetime homes – all of which are explained in the context of Code for Sustainable Homes credits.
SustainabilityVideo
The BaleHaus
Craig White of White Design and ModCell – one of the firms behind the BaleHaus – explains the difference in ethos between traditional straw bale construction and the semi-industrialised panelised ...
SustainabilityVideo
Embodied Carbon Emissions of Construction Products
Engineers increasingly need to know more about the environmental performance of the construction products used in their designs, but there is a concern that comparisons between alternative materials, ...
SustainabilityVideo
Unlocking the Real Value of Waste
Unlocking the value of the UK's waste will require investment of at least ten to twenty billion pounds in infrastructure over the period to 2020. That was the main conclusion of a recent study into ...
SustainabilityVideo
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Flood Risk - The Impact on Property
In this programme we look at the impact of flood risk on the value and insurability of property.
SustainabilityVideo
Eco-towns - folly or inspiration?
Last summer, before the recession was confirmed, the Government committed £8 billion to delivering 3 million new homes by 2020. Part of this overall target is an increase in the supply of affordable ...
SustainabilityVideo
Biomimicry in architecture
In the search for sustainable building design and technology, 'biomimicry' is a term we hear with increasing frequency. But as a concept, it is often misunderstood. The use of nature as a sourcebook ...
Sustainability
The Collaboration Engine
One unexpected outcome from the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team (IGT) which reported to government in November 2010 was a call for the use of BIM to be required on government ...
SustainabilityDigital Transformation
Building limes: an introduction
The programme explains the properties of lime (including how it differs from Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC)) and how it is used in today's construction industry, particularly in mortars, renders and ...
SustainabilityVideo
'Quantum change' needed to achieve low carbon construction
Construction leaders have spoken: lack of clear leadership, over-complexity in carbon reduction policies, and a failure of government departments and the building industry to work together, are ...
