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
concrete
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.
concrete
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.
Greening the concrete jungle: How to make environmentally friendly cement
Cement is the world’s most widely used material apart from water, largely because it is the key ingredient in concrete, the world’s favourite building material.
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Reduce embodied carbon from the start
Measure, compare and reduce upfront embodied carbon using trusted UK data and pre-built assemblies.
Has bendable concrete cracked the maintenance burden?
Billions of pounds are spent every year dealing with the resulting cracks and, in recent years, scientists have been experimenting with a range of self-healing technologies. Now researchers in ...
Design and SpecificationSustainability
Self-healing concrete
Cracking concrete and costly repair bills could be a thing of the past as university researchers trial technologies to deliver 'self-healing' concrete.
Design and SpecificationConstruction Products
The problem with reinforced concrete
By itself, concrete is a very durable construction material. The magnificent Pantheon in Rome, the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, is in excellent condition after nearly 1,900 years. And ...
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
Visual concrete
This programme will be of benefit to architects, structural engineers, project managers and construction specialists who wish to understand how concrete can be used on walls, columns, slabs and ...
Design and SpecificationConstruction Products
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Unstabilised rammed earth
As well as looking at the properties of rammed earth, or pise, this programme asks whether concrete should be added as a stabiliser, the issue of cost, and along the way we look at some high-profile failures and successes.
SustainabilityConstruction Products
The Relevance of Ronan Point Today
Ronan Point, a tower block in east London which suffered a fatal partial collapse in 1968 due to a gas explosion, was a critical event that changed the way UK engineers considered robustness.
Design and SpecificationVideo
Precast concrete pavement lights
Used to allow light to basement areas, pavement lights first appeared in London in the late 1880s in the form of cast iron frames glazed with cut squares of glass. Plain glass fenestration was ...
Construction ProductsConcrete
Engineering the Shard
Renzo Piano's Shard is the tallest building in Western Europe. This programme looks at how engineers WSP helped the architect realise his design in one of the most constrained sites imaginable. The ...
Design and SpecificationVideo
Getting Started with Eurocode 2
Eurocode 2 is the new standard for the design of concrete structures. It has been hailed as a robust and rigorous design code, taking a less prescriptive approach to design.
