What Specifiers Want 2017 articles

Over 2000 construction professionals from across the industry registered for our first-ever two-day digital conference, 'The Construction Leaders' Summit: The Digital Future'. The summit aimed to bring together government and industry experts to discuss the political, legal and technological drivers for change as well as the impact of the pandemic. The event gained an incredible reaction and response over two days. Here are our key takeaways.

This article is based on a webinar of the same name by NBS Technical Author Charles Stirling with a guest introduction by Paul Chatham, Peregrine Bryant Architects. In it, we explore conservation in construction and how NBS Chorus works in conjunction with the RIBA Plan of Work 2020 to create successful conservation project specifications.

Following the recent NBS webinar reviewing the context, content and potential impact of the draft Building Safety Bill, there have been a few requests for a list of the many references mentioned in the presentation. This article provides some useful links and summaries of the key documents and reports for easier access and further reading.

J Foster Architects is a London-based practice founded by Jeremy Foster, that predominantly delivers small residential projects such as conversions, extensions and renovations. The practice has used the NBS Building software for many years but has recently migrated to NBS Chorus Small Works. Dr Stephen Hamil, NBS Innovation Director, caught up with Jeremy to find out more about his NBS Chorus experience.

The situation that the construction industry is confronted with today would have been beyond anyone’s perception or comprehension at the start of 2020.

On the 20th July 2020, the Government published the ‘Draft Building Safety Bill’: the most radical proposed overhaul of building safety regulations for decades. In the wake of recent tragedies, much work has been conducted under Dame Judith Hackitt’s leadership to make way for a better, safer future for buildings and those who occupy them.

The construction industry operates under a considerable amount of health and safety legislation – and for a good reason. Before the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, the industry regularly had more than 300 health and safety-related worker deaths per year.

Classification is needed in the construction industry. It was needed in a pre-BIM environment (an early example being the Swedish Samarbetskomittén för Byggnadsfrågor, SfB, which was launched in 1950), and it is needed even more in a BIM environment where the benefits of digital interoperability are likely to be huge.

Within the construction industry, there have been advances in the way we look at how we create buildings. Environmentally conscious building, also known as sustainable construction, is an innovative modern idea introducing more environmentally, socially and economically aware construction methods.

This year’s 2020 BIM survey marks the 10th year of asking the industry for their views about BIM. In this article, we’ve picked out ten of the key things that we’ve learnt about the latest state of BIM from this year’s survey.

When working on basic construction projects, where the work is of a simple nature, then typically this work will be undertaken using a ‘small works’ standard form construction contract. Generally speaking, contracts for small works do not support the use of bills of quantities as pricing documents because the extra cost of preparation is not usually justified when the level of detail is not required.

Many smaller practices work on less complex construction projects. While there is no universal definition of what a ‘small works’ project is, it is generally characterized by being simple, using straightforward methods, and it is typically procured following a traditional methodology.