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It’s up to the services engineer to fully understand the client laboratory equipment, the room requirements, the health and safety issues and the processes within the lab, as well as understanding what the other disciplines need to provide.

While early BIM slides had a digital thread looping operational data all the way around, in fact there are all sorts of breakpoints.The handover from construction into operation never works particularly effectively, and we never really get that kind of handover into the capital model.

Planning has always been one of the big digital breaks, where things suddenly go into quite a subjective, painful, and paper based process, and planning has long been held as a blocker to housing, amongst other things.The impact of digitising the planning process would be enormous, causing many other aspects to fall into place.. Digitising planning with RIPA and BoPS.Still, digitising planning presents a complex and difficult challenge.

Rickets says that while planning isn’t broken, it is slow.Once the designs of architects and engineers are submitted to the local planning authority, all of that design, modelling, information and data, is, in a sense, dumbed down.

It’s turned back into 2D plans and some PDF documents.

Much of the valuable information is lost because councils can’t consume the 3D designs and BIM models created by architects and engineers.. From this point, the information goes to the local planning authority.Bryden Wood’s strategy to achieve net zero carbon building is based on the adoption of a clear hierarchy for operational and embodied carbon..

In order to substantially reduce operational carbon, our designs will adopt the following hierarchy:.Be Lean (passive): minimise the use of energy via passive design measures such as optimised form, orientation and window-to-wall ratio (WWR); design energy efficient facades that incorporate thermal insulation, high airtightness, external shading and solar control glazing; use of natural ventilation and thermal mass and design transitional spaces and low thermal expectation spaces.. Be Lean (active): minimise the use of energy via energy efficient lighting (LED, daylight and presence control sensors) and ventilation systems (demand control ventilation, low SFPs, heat recovery); use technologies such as waste-water heat recovery and specify energy efficient lifts and appliances/equipment.. Be Clean: connect to district heating networks that have plans for decarbonisation; explore plans and feasibility of local hydrogen district networks.. Be Green: use onsite low and zero carbon technologies such as air source heat pumps (ASHP), ground source heat pumps (GSHP), photovoltaic panels, solar collectors for domestic hot water and wind generation among others.. Be Smart: implement innovative technologies such as electric batteries, heat storage, post-occupancy evaluation and develop smart-metering systems..

Offset: any remaining carbon should be offset via Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) or recognised carbon offset schemes.Offsets used should be publicly disclosed.. An example of specific design strategies that Bryden Wood have adopted follow the proposed operational carbon hierarchy is shown in Figure 5 and is demonstrated with examples below..