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.
Wired-up roads will soon charge your electric car - while you're driving
It was Tesla Motors, more than any other company, that triggered the current interest in electric cars. The firm’s namesake, Nikola Tesla, a genius inventor and Thomas Edison’s arch rival, would no ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
Should Britain build on its green spaces to solve the housing crisis?
Back in the 1930s, English planners came up with a novel idea to prevent urban sprawl: a ring of countryside surrounding the city, protected from development by law. This “green belt” would preserve ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Heat in non-domestic buildings: Help unlock carbon and bill savings
The Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) sees significant potential for savings from heat, cooling and energy efficiency within the different non-domestic sectors (public, ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Windows, glass, glazing - a brief history
Windows From our earliest times, the need for light has been central to our needs as humans. Letting light into a cave or crude structure allowed its inhabitants to better perform tasks and navigate ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
The top Medium posts about construction you need to read
What is Medium? Launched in 2012 by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Medium is a publishing platform that features a uniform, minimalistic design that serves to put the writing in the spotlight.
Design and SpecificationSustainability
The NBS guide to damp
All material contains moisture to greater or lesser degrees. Those that are porous – concrete, mortar, wood – begin their life with their pores filled with water. As they dry, the water content drops ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
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The pros and cons of polymer photovoltaics
Photovoltaic (PV) technology allows solar energy to be converted directly into electricity. Photovoltaic panels come in a variety of options to suit the varying requirements of structure types; ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
How to ensure smart cities benefit everyone
Technology has the power to help people live in communities that are more responsive to their needs and that can actually improve their lives. For example, Beijing, notorious for air pollution, is ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
A guide to cavity wall insulation
Cavity wall insulation can be a great way of improving the thermal performance of a building, making it both warmer and cheaper to heat, but it's not always a suitable solution. We explore the pros ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
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
The cities of the future could be built by microbes
Image: Illustration of pressure sensing bacteria in soils from the ‘Computational Colloids Project’. Carolina Ramirez-Figuroa, Luis Hernan and Martyn Dade-Robertson, CC BY-SA
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Have your say in our EU Referendum Survey
Four months after UK’s referendum on our future in Europe, I would like to invite you to take part in a follow-up NBS survey about the future of our sector.
