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.
NBS in 2021: Top 10 highlights
Throughout the year, we’ve focussed on the improving the way the construction industry specifies projects, finds products and uses data. We’ve also aimed to tackle the major issues of the day, ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
5 Key Takeaways from the Construction Leaders' Summit: Building Better
In September NBS hosted its second digital conference of 2021 the Construction Leaders’ Summit: Building Better, chaired by Richard Waterhouse who was joined by leading figures in the construction ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Holistic Specification of Materials
Earlier this year, NBS hosted a webinar on the theme of holistic specification of materials, presented by Taleen Josefsson, Thrive Project Leader at Chetwoods. In this article, Taleen provides ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
The three pillars of sustainability
Our Common Future, the Brundtland Report Our Common Future is the 1987 publication by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) credited for introducing the concept of sustainable ...
Sustainability
8 key takeaways from CLS 2021 for Specifiers
The Construction Leaders’ Summit: Building for the Future was another fascinating and informative conference from NBS, with hundreds of professionals from across the sector hearing from more than 20 ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
The Construction Leaders' Summit: six key takeaways
1. Stop making excuses, start making changes All of us have had to adapt to new ways of working following the COVID-19 pandemic. We've seen that if a significant driver like the pandemic comes along, ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
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What is environmentally conscious building
Background In the past few decades, there have been a variety of approaches used to make construction greener and more sustainable. Examples include using solar panels and integrating eco-friendly, ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Using NBS to specify sustainable outcomes on projects
Sustainability is arguably the most expansive strategy in the RIBA Plan of Work 2020.
Design and SpecificationSustainability
RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Overview – Question and answer
In April 2020 Dale Sinclair, Director of Technical Practice at AECOM gave a presentation giving an overview to the RIBA Plan of Work 2020. Following the session, a number of questions were raised by ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
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
Construction waste and materials efficiency
The statistics In 2015, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) reported in their second edition of the Digest of Waste and Resource Statistics that, while efforts have been ...
SustainabilityHealth and Safety
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 ...
