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Very clear and appropriate specifications and standards could help to accelerate the investment in and development of biogenic solvents, transitions, and approvals..

Our M&E design challenge was to look at the entire office environment and standardise the design of the M&E systems to deliver outstanding performance, while controlling costs and ensuring that the exposed services were aesthetically appealing as well.. Driving value in M&E building services at the Forge.Our solution was to use a small variety of repeatable elements.

Across the entire project, we have minimised the variety of types and sizes of equipment and distribution modules.This is to ensure repeatability, without compromising the performance of the building, both in terms of energy consumption and user comfort.Doing this allows us to combine efficiency of performance with economies of scale on buying, for example, larger quantities of single gauge of pipe.. For ease of installation, we use pre-wired electrical products wherever possible.

Fan and pipe modules are fabricated off-site, designed for simple connection on site.. We pre-cast a pattern of fixing points into the soffit, so that there would be no drilling into the soffit onsite – avoiding working at height, dirt, noise and the risk of drilling into the steel rebar within the concrete.The pattern of the fixing points caters to full range of M&E service elements, according to size and purpose: some are attached to unistrut, some are on frames or drop rods, and some are fixed directly to the soffit.

But in order to keep fixings and supports to a minimum, fixing requirements for all M&E services are considered in coordination and designed to be shared between modules / equipment.

They are also pre-attached offsite wherever possible, ready to fix to the pre-cast points.. Pre-assembled pipe modules massively reduce the amount of working at height required.Extract of data published by Price and Myers for the embodied carbon of superstructures in projects with 2 to 10 storeys and excluding basements.. Today, engineered timber is a suitable solution to reduce embodied carbon in buildings but this may change in the future once the construction industry moves towards new materials as an alternative to standard concrete and steel.. Constructing with timber presents its own technical challenges, but using a science-based approach to find the best solution means we can deliver not just an honest building but a resilient, high-quality asset.. End of life global warming impact.

Although timber captures carbon, if left to rot naturally in an open-air landfill, it releases the stored carbon as well as methane, which has a greater global warming impact than CO2.If incinerated, it generates energy and does not release methane but still releases the stored carbon along with other pollutants.

However, if reused or upcycled, carbon remains stored offering long-lasting environmental benefits..Some of these end-of-life difficulties with engineered timber relate to its size.