Category: Newsletter

With so much talk about increasing renewable energy capacity and the role that hydrogen could play as part of the future energy mix, you’d be forgiven for sometimes thinking that there’s been a loss of mainstream focus on simply making buildings more efficient. And by ‘efficient’ we mean both energy efficient, and efficient in terms of resource use.

For the built environment to play its part in protecting people from the worst impacts of climate change, it’s absolutely essential that we achieve high quality buildings that deliver long-term performance – something that this article from ArchDaily summarises neatly.

A lot of businesses and organisations still talk about using offsetting to address some of their carbon emissions, but it remains a controversial topic. The potential lack of effectiveness of carbon offsetting has been thrown into sharp relief around the world, as forests that are part of offsetting programmes have caught fire as a result of the increased frequency of extreme weather and climate events.

That’s not to say that some carbon offsetting programmes can’t and don’t work. There needs to be more clarity about what programmes actually deliver, however – which is exactly what this integrity initiative aims to provide.

The pace of change in this area remains rapid, and as ever it will be interesting to see how the construction industry adapts its behaviour in response to wider societal change. Equally, the built environment has a significant role to play in demonstrating that net zero can be achieved while keeping the need for offsetting to a minimum.

A vast majority of the construction industry operates in very traditional ways, but are those methods and processes fit for the future? “We’ve always done it that way” can be a mantra for designers and contractors alike, and this fascinating article on the complexity of buildings asks why that is the case.

Challenges like climate change and resource availability mean that some change is inevitable (the BBC recently featured an interesting piece on waste in construction). Back in issue 5 of this newsletter, we featured the House Planning Help podcast, and one of their recent episodes looked at digitally manufactured houses – could this be the future of domestic construction?

There are other examples of where people in construction are looking at different solutions to address needs. One that caught our eye was a modular development, designed to the Passivhaus standard, to help the homeless. What new or innovative solutions are you looking at currently?

Raw material shortages, international shipping delays and product price increases are all putting a squeeze on the construction industry at the moment. It’s more common than ever for contractors to seek approval for alternative solutions that are more readily available or more cost effective.

If you’re a regular specifier of PIR insulation and you’re finding that price rises and product shortages are hampering your projects, you might be interested in our new article that sets out why XPS could be your new go-to floor insulation of choice.

Read more about our comparison of XPS and PIR floor insulation here.

We’ve never had the pleasure of working on a project with the team at Greengauge Building Energy Consultants, but their newsletter is one we always look out for in our inbox. Each month The Heat of the Moment features Greengauge’s own detailed and authoritative construction-related insights, alongside interesting bits and pieces that have caught the attention of the team. Subscribe to the newsletter at the Greengauge website.

For designers looking to gain a better understanding of energy efficient buildings or to learn more about the Passivhaus standard, the Passivhaus in Plain English blog archive is an ideal place to start. As the name of the blog suggests, architect and Passive House Designer, Elrond Burrell, spent several years posting about building performance in a way that is accessible to all readers.

A few newsletters ago we mentioned Passive House + magazine, and their excellent in-depth coverage of low energy construction. In June they hosted their first online roundtable event, with an impressive array of expert speakers discussing the topic of thermal bridging. The event is free to view online here.

With over 300 to choose from, it’s impossible to single out one episode of the House Planning Help podcast as being the best place to start listening. The podcast covers every aspect of self-build and low energy design and construction. Many of the huge variety of subjects are of interest to designers and specifiers, and the guest is always an expert with lots of practical experience. Our recommendation: look for a topic that interests you, and start from there!

Following on from the theme of this month’s featured blog post, the two resources we’re highlighting both do an excellent job of making complex information more accessible and clearer to understand.

The Designing Buildings Wiki is a crowd-sourced hub of construction knowledge, backed by high profile associations and organisations. There is an existing wealth of information, to which anybody can contribute in accordance with the site’s guidelines.

Building Regulations are a notoriously complex set of documents. The third edition of Guide to the Building Regulations sets out the structure of the regulations, their requirements, and the technical guidance of the Approved Documents, in a way that is easy to navigate and is arguably more logical than the ‘official’ publications. Approved Document B has been updated a number of times since the book’s publication date, but it remains a useful reference.

The Get It Right Initiative, known as GIRI, is working to promote a culture within UK construction of learning from mistakes and seeking to eliminate error. Making improvements in this area would reduce waste and potentially save billions of pounds.

One of their resources is the Guide to Improving Value by Reducing Design Error, produced by the GIRI design working group.

At the end of 2020, GIRI hosted a webinar featuring the co-founder and director of the Designing Buildings Wiki. The session focused on knowledge sharing, and how better knowledge sharing can help to reduce error.

• • Inspiration to achieve better buildings doesn’t come much better than Passive House + magazine. Every issue features multiple in-depth case studies telling the stories of low energy new-build and retrofit projects. Each is illustrated with site photos and supported by in-depth technical detail of how the end result was achieved. Comprehensive news articles, enlightening expert columnists, and technical examinations of current building performance issues complete each highly readable edition.

• Although focused on helping to put London “on the path to a zero carbon future”, the London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) is creating resources that any construction professional can apply to their work, wherever they are based. Their Climate Emergency Design Guide is helping architects to approach a topic for which no formal standard currently exists, while documents like this Net Zero 1-Pager give a useful summary for anyone looking to engage with this complex topic.