Elemental

These are my links for July 1st from 08:46 to 13:54:

• Quarterly Energy Prices – BIS – "Quarterly Energy Prices is DECC's publication covering energy prices. It includes data formerly included in ‘Energy Trends’ (Tables 26 to 30) and the ‘Digest of UK Energy Statistics’ (Chapter 9).
  It contains tables, charts and commentary on industrial, domestic and international prices. "
• ASHRAE Unveils Design of New Building Energy Label – CoStar Group – ASHRAE unveil details of BEQ (Building Energy Quotient), very similar to DEC's: "as many expected, the prototype borrows heavily from the U.K.’s Display Energy Certificate, an energy label that is required for some buildings in England and Wales. Unveiled Saturday by Harrison, it grades energy efficiency on a color-coded letter scale from “A+” to “F”, with the highest grade reserved for net-zero energy buildings."
• BRE :: News – Convergance in standards continues: "These developments will be in line with the work on common metrics which is being undertaken by BRE Global, CSTB and other major organizations such as DGnB, VTT, NIST, ITC-CNR and FCAV within the SB Alliance, as well as the common carbon measurement to be established between BREEAM, LEED, and Green-Star currently being led by BRE Global."

admin News ashrae, beq, BREEAM, DEC, DGnB, Energy, HQE, LEED, prices, statistics, UK

Instead of today’s usual posting of links (I’m behind on my reading thanks to the Part L consultation which I am slowly digesting), here are two gorgeous websites with visualisations of LEED, both via Twitter.

The first is LeedVisual which uses one page per credit with simple illustrations, for instance for EQ_2, a simple diagram:

As a learning tool for the exam, this is brilliant. Probably not much use to a practicioner, but some elegantly simple illustrations.

The second, I love even more. The LEED NC v2.2 Study Map is obviously a sample of the web designer’s work, but it is beautiful. As a tool for study it is superb, but I could also see a use for practitioners. I would love to have the ability to blow this up and print at large scale, so I could scribble on it. You really need to visit the website to zoom in and see the level of detail they have gone into (including linkages).

I’ve done similar exercises for BREEAM on pinboards with index cards, post-its and string for both internal and external use, but nothing this elegant.

admin Accreditation LEED, visualisation

I’ve been geeking out over my gorgeous faux leather hard bound copy of the 2009 Ashrae Handbook – Fundamentals (SI units) which recently arrived in the post. One of  the perks of ASHRAE membership is an updated copy every year of one of the handbooks on a rolling schedule (something CIBSE have started to do too in recent years).

Anyway, in this year’s tome is a new chapter – Chapter 35 SUSTAINABILITY. Under ‘Characteristics of Sustainability’ is a clarifying few paragraphs on the difference between green and sustainable buildings. For reference:

Sustainability Addresses the Future

Sustainability is focused on the distant future (e.g., 30 to 50 years). Any actions taken under the name of sustainability must address the impact of present actions on conditions likely to prevail in that future time frame.

In designing the built environment, the emphasis has often been on the present or the near future, usually in the form of capital- or first-cost impact. As is apparent when life-cycle costing analysis is applied, capital cost assumes less importance the longer the future period under consideration.

This emphasis on the distant future can differentiate sustainable design from green design. Whereas green design addresses many of the same characteristics as sustainable design, it may also emphasise near-term impacts such as indoor environmental quality, operation and maintenance features, and meeting current client needs. This, green design may focus more on the immediate future (i.e. starting when the building is first constructed and then occupied). Sustainable design is of paramount importance to the global environment in the long-term while still incorporating features of green design that focus on the present and near future.

An interesting way to slice the problem, and makes me realise (by this definition, at least), most of the stuff that I am most interested in is green design, rather than sustainable design, occupant comfort being my raison d’etre. The chapter goes on to point out that HVAC&R engineers cannot by themselves create global sustainability (however, we all need to do our bit and encourage as many others as possible), and that sustainability has many contributors, is comprehensive and that technology plays only a partial role.

As green building rating systems continue to converge (BREEAM and LEED), I find a growing interest in keeping up to date with ASHRAE, which I have always found more ‘engineery’ than CIBSE (in that their technical guidance seems to have many more equations than CIBSE).

Given ASHRAE’s definition, which rating system is more sustainable (rather than green) – LEED or BREEAM? Something I’ll poder a while longer…

admin Opinion ashrae, BREEAM, CIBSE, green, LEED, Sustainable

These are my links for June 16th through June 21st:

• The young generation with a new vision to build Britain | Art and design | The Observer – Fairly fluffy piece in the Observer on the new generation of iconoclast architects, more devoted to context, collaboration and sustainability than iconic buildings which celebrate individualism. Good quote from Patrick though: "Patrick Lynch is actively hostile to what he sees as the inevitable decline of modernism into what he calls the "idiot avant garde, which means that all your work ultimately looks the same, whatever the climate". He claims that younger architects are disenchanted with "the idea that technological progress equals artistic progress equals moral progress equals virtue, which leads to the kind of thinking that it's OK to go and build for a completely unpalatable regime and f**k up the planet for money, because you're working in your signature style and it's an expression of individual creativity"."
• BSRIA feature on new BREEAM In-Use measuring a building’s actual sustainability – Good overview from BSRIA: "With BREEAM In-Use the bulk of the work is carried out by the client in the form of an online self-assessment tool.
  If an organisation wants a formal certificate it can hire a BREEAM assessor who would assess the inputs into the online tool and certify the rating.
  the certificates have a limited validity. The certificates expire after three years for single asset assessments, and after just one year for portfolios and Part 3-only assessments.
  the development of BREEAM In-Use was driven by the need to assess a building within a few hours.
  BREEAM In-Use is also relatively cheap at just £100 per asset (a building).
  The plus points for the BREEAM In-Use scheme is that it links into other rating tools, which buildings are required to have anyway, such as Energy Performance Certificates and Display Energy Certificates. BREEAM In-Use is also advertised as being useful to gaining and maintaining ISO 14001 accreditation."
• New Planning Policy for Wales – Although Wales are only looking for 'Very Good' score in BREEAM, the energy still needs to be 'Excellent' (and I presume needs a PCR?): "Applications received on or after 1st September 2009 for non-residential development which will either have a floorspace of 1,000sqm or more, or will be carried out on a site having an area of one hectare or more, to meet the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) ‘Very Good’ standard and achieve the mandatory credits for ‘Excellent’ under issue Ene 1 – Reduction of CO2 emissions."
• CARBON REDUCTION COMMITMENT GUIDE LAUNCHED: British Property Federation – Confirms my iitial thoughts on CRC: "Hermes, which runs the BT pension fund, has undertaken a modelling exercise3 across its directly managed 103 properties. It found that during the first three-year period of CRC – where the price of carbon is fixed – it may be cheaper for the landlord to simply write-off the cost of carbon allowances rather than incur the administrative and legal costs of engaging with tenants, in effect taking away any incentive for tenants to reduce carbon. Although this situation is likely to change in year four when the price of carbon is no longer capped, it does mean that the scheme could fail to reduce as much CO2 emissions as it would with the benefit of tenant engagement. The government might then fail to achieve its ambitious carbon reduction targets by 2020."
• Architecture is most exclusive profession – Building Design – I initially toyed with ideas of doing architecture when at school. I didn't have A level Art (clashed with Physics) so ended up in engineering (probably much better suited to me). No pangs of regret when I see stats like this: "documents released by the Cabinet Office’s panel for Fair Access to the Professions show it costs more to qualify as an architect — over £60,000 — than any other profession. The panel also found newly qualified architects earned just over £20,000 a year, one of the lowest starting salaries in the professions."

admin News Architecture, BPF, BREEAM, BSRIA, CRC, In_Use, starchitect, wales

These are my links for June 15th from 15:51 to 19:56:

• Remember I’m the Bloody Architect: Into the Abyss – Poignant piece from Alice on the recession: "Desperate, and knowing only one industry, many buy vans with their redundancy pay and scratch a living doing jobbing work. Architects and technologists set up their own practices, tiny little one man bands, operating from the spare room or a corner of the living room. They make a living from loo extensions and tiny little alterations. The profession fractures into a thousand small peices."
• WiredBiz | Epicenter | Wired.com – Why consultants will be around for a while yet – clients don't have time to do their own job PLUS the work we do for them (which they *could* do given unlimited time and budget), and also want to reduce risk. Good to remember: "Under Anderson’s model, people will continue to pay good money to save time (that is, those who have more money than time will), lower their risk (such as paying to assure that their Second Life land will still be there, or that their operating system will be supported), because they love something (such as buying virtual items in free videogames), or to increase their status in a community."

admin News business_models, free, recession, web, web2.0

These are my links for June 3rd through June 5th:

• ECUK – Sustainability – Engineers chartered with EC now explicitly expected to "Do more than just comply with legislation and codes": "ECUK’s Guidance on Sustainability clarifies the role of engineers in relation to sustainability and lists six principles to guide professional engineers in their work. It should be read alongside sustainability related information produced by Professional Engineering Institutions, such as codes, policy statements or guidance of a technical nature. "
• Sustainable legislation: keep it simple – Building – Pooran Desai of BioRegional takes on CSH: "Up to Code Level 4, the outcomes from an environmental persepective are basically sound though the metrics can be made more straightforward, robust. However, Code 5 and 6 as they are currently written are of dubious environmental value. The industry now generally accepts that forcing ‘net zero carbon’ on-site electricity generation is not helpful. There are other problems. On higher density sites particularly where you can’t collect sufficient rainwater to flush toilets, it forces on-site grey water treatment, often energy and chemical intensive, when even the Centre for Alternative Technology states that conventional sewage treatment is more eco-friendly than on-site grey water recycling. The solutions needed to deliver Code 5 and 6 are not just expensive in capital terms, but may not be kept operational because of high maintenance costs. This means that many homes built to current Code Level 5 and 6 will be less eco-friendly than Code 4."
• Genuine partnership remains the key to regeneration success – The Regeneration Blog – Excellent point, and not just for regeneration, but the entire construction industry: "I was at a conference the other day when a very clever person (oh, I wish, I wish, it had been me) said "less than three years ago we were confidently asserting that we had seen the end of boom-and-bust, now we are bust we are pinning our hopes back on the forthcoming boom. Well, you can't have it both ways"."
• Lord Turner on failed markets, irrational markets and environmental policy – 21 May 2009 – "The CCC’s report concluded that the electricity sector would have to be radically decarbonised by the 2030s in order to meet the 80% 2050 target. This cleaner electricity could then be applied, across other sectors such as transport, to help reduce emissions. He said that the CCC had concluded that the volatile nature of the financial market, with its direct impact on carbon and fossil fuel prices meant that a wholly market-led approach to tackling climate change would simply not work. Stronger policy instruments, coupled with government intervention would be needed to deliver the radical changes required."
• Living Building Challenge Version 1.3 — ILBI – A kind of supplement to LEED, via CRGBC: "The Living Building Challenge is a rigorous performance standard that defines the closest measure of true sustainability in the built environment, using a benchmark of what is currently possible and given the best knowledge available today. Version 1.3 is comprised of sixteen prerequisites within six performance areas, or Petals: Site, Energy, Materials, Water, Indoor Quality, and Beauty + Inspiration."
• China’s Grand Plans for <br/>Eco-Cities Now Lie Abandoned by Christina Larson: Yale Environment 360 – Arup's mythical Dongtan – lessons learned (a must-read): "Dongtan and other highly touted eco-cities across China were meant to be models of sustainable design for the future. Instead they’ve become models of bold visions that mostly stayed on the drawing boards — or collapsed from shoddy implementation. More often than not, these vaunted eco-cities have been designed by big-name foreign architectural and engineering firms who plunged into the projects with little understanding of Chinese politics, culture, and economics — and with little feel for the needs of local residents whom the utopian communities were designed to serve."
• NYCDOT – Street Design Manual – "The New York City Street Design Manual provides policies and design guidelines to city agencies, design professionals, private developers and community groups for the improvement of streets and sidewalks throughout the five boroughs. It is intended to serve as a comprehensive resource for promoting higher quality street designs and more efficient project implementation.
  The Manual builds on the experience of innovation in street design, materials and lighting that has developed around the world, emphasizing a balanced approach that gives equal weight to transportation, community and environmental goals. It is designed to be a flexible document that will change and grow, incorporating new treatments as appropriate after testing. The use and continued development of the Street Design Manual will assure that New York City remains a leading innovator in the public realm as it becomes a greater, greener city."
• Eco-ventilation health scare prompts regulation change – Building – "The draft report by the BRE’s Dr Michael Swainson and seen by Building, found that filters were not being replaced when worn out, which could lead to a build-up of humidity, carbon dioxide and other pollutants, as well as driving up energy use. It also says this could increase the risk of cancer in the homes of smokers.
  Mechanical ventilation systems are required in energy-efficient airtight homes to make sure that fresh air can circulate and that pollutants and humidity are extracted from the house. However, like a hoover, if the filter is not replaced the system stops working.
  The systems are virtually unavoidable if a home is to meet level four of the Code for Sustainable Homes, which all new homes in the social sector must meet by 2010."

admin News arup, bedzed, built_environment, chartership, China, cities, city, code, CSH, design, dongtan, EC, EcoHomes, Economics, electricity, filters, generation, mcdonough, nyc, obligations, planning, recession, standards, Sustainability, transport, UK, urban, ventilation

Hattie over at AJ has an update on our favourite eco-Hobbit House, which I originally posted in January 2007. The post is in my top ten most popular, so maybe the market for such dwellings is growing?

Still no word on how it passes Building Regs, but good to see the movement growing – the builder will be assisting 11 others to build a house each in a settlement in Wales. A refreshing change to the UK standard volume housebuilder offering.

admin Diversions hobbit, Housing, self build

I have a new geek-crush. For those who have not yet come across the inimitable Hans Rosling, I urge you all to head over to the awesome Gapminder website, whose strapline is “Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view”.  An incredibly clear way of illustrating facts and figures.

Today, I’m going to look at Hans’ talk on Human Rights and Democracy Statistics. Watch it if you have time (9 mins 51 secs).

If you don’t, the central premise is that there is a weak statistical link between life expectancy, income and democracy. As Hans goes on to explain, this does not mean that human rights should not be pursued, but as a means to an end perhaps they are weak. Fascinating stuff (go on, watch it – he explains it much better than me).

This was interesting to me for a number of reasons. I read Fared Zakaria’s book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad about 18 months ago, and in it he poses a direct relationship between GDP per capita income and the emergence of democracy. Using the year 2000 as a base, when income >$6000 democracy is highly resilient and for those countries below that threshold he has some rules of thumb as to when democracy is likely to appear. Zakaria makes some important points between the differences in liberty and democracy (the two are not dependent on each other). Another book which offers similar threshold’s is Kenichi Ohmae’s The Borderless World which I read not long after Zakaria. He posits that (using a 1990 base) around GNP$5000 per capita, givernments still have control of information and the ability to mislead poeple. As GNP rises, the power of governments and religions fall and by $26,000 (i.e. Japan in his example) people have access to information and make choices on value and quality (cheapest and best).

Both of these observations have an effect on framing sustainability in different contexts, especially at a global level. In a  strategic, scenario planning sense, it is essential to consider social and economic factors – a technological solution which works in one country make not work in another, and not for purely technical reasons.

The second reason I’m intrigued by Hans’ work is that I’ve been cooking up a theory for a  couple of years now, which would compare a country’s sustainability credentials to it’s ‘cultural dimensions’ as defined by Hofstede (primarily the female/male aspect). I’m sure someone must have done a thesis on this – if anyone knows of a study, please let me know. I can’t find the Hofstede data in Gapminder, but as it isn’t (yet) a time series, I didn’t really expect to see it.

I’ve had so much fun playing with the graphs and animations, I’m sure I’ll come back to Gapminder another day. Enjoy!

admin Economics democracy, Economics, statistics

These are my links for May 26th through June 1st:

• Concentration Solar Power Module Integrates Into Side And Roof Of Buildings – min-CSP – intriguing but no data in the article to back up the theory: "The system, of which the international patent has already been requested, consists of a stationary lens and a linear absorber plate that concentrates sunlight to generate energy. This concentration system reduces the space that until now was needed with traditional plates, which move around in search of sunlight"
• UK Climate Impacts Programme – Socio-economic scenarios – Getting quite old now (Feb 2001) but sets forward 4 potential scenarios for socio-economic situations against which climate change will play out in the UK :
  1. National Enterprise
  2. Local Stewardship
  3. World Markets
  4. Global Sustainability
  At 140 pages, it's not a quick read, but useful resource.
• A glimpse of the future as 56% of surveyors see workload fall (Brickonomics) – More sound commentary from Brian: "But for all the figures on workload, the two bits of data that will probably reflect most the long-term effects of the recession are those for employment and for profit margins. Both continue to look grim.
  It may sound like a management course cliché but one of the biggest weaknesses of the construction industry is one of its biggest strengths, its flexibility.
  And this weakness is exaggerated by the easy willingness of firms to work at below cost.
  My recollection of the 1990s recession was the less damage was done by falling workloads, which the industry's flexibility can absorb without huge stresses, than was done by winning work below true cost or at unsustainable thin margins."
• Monbiot.com » How Much Should We Leave in the Ground? – I had wondered about this before – good to see George has done the math for me: "Even ignoring all unconventional sources and all other greenhouse gases and taking the most optimistic of the figures in the two Nature papers, we can afford to burn only 61% of known fossil fuel reserves between now and eternity." This would result in a 2ºC rise in temperature. Adaptation, here we come…
• Monbiot.com » Crash Landing – Monbiot being unusually level headed: "we were told by both the airline companies and the Confederation of British Industry that business flights were necessary and non-negotiable: civilisation would collapse if executives weren’t able to fly whenever and wherever they wished. The government repeated this creed, insisting that the UK economy was dependent on the expansion of Heathrow. Now we learn that these are the first expenses to be cut when a contraction begins. Businesses are discovering that there are other means of engaging with people overseas, such as email, video-conferencing and an outlandish new device called the telephone."
• ACE – If we can’t count the buildings, how can we plan cuts in emissions? – There's an elephant in the room, and his name is data: "There is no definitive data showing precisely what the carbon footprint of Europe's buildings is. So we can have no confidence we can identify precisely what percentage of the carbon dioxide emissions by end use comes from space heating as opposed to water heating, lights and appliances as opposed to cooking."
• Why Has Globalization Led to Bigger Cities? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com – Great article on cities with a slant on India: "The right response to the problems of megacities is not to get misty-eyed about village life, but rather to work to improve the quality of infrastructure in those growing urban areas."
• FT.com | The Undercover Economist | Dear Economist: Can you help me to stop procrastinating? – How to cope with procrastination: "The behavioural economists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch conducted an instructive study of procrastination with three groups of students at MIT. Each group had to complete three assignments over the course of the 12-week course. The first group had a separate deadline for each paper, after four, eight and 12 weeks. The second group had no intermediate deadlines: all three papers were due at the end of the course. Students in the third group were asked to impose their own deadlines.
  Students with well-spaced deadlines – those in the first group and a subset in the third who had spaced out their deadlines – tended to achieve the highest grades. Students who had assigned themselves no intermediate deadlines, or had been assigned none, fared poorly."
• A new era for public health? « – "Yet one group of very important people now admit they too have neglected the issue. The latest edition of The Lancet – probably the world’s leading medical journal – says health professionals “have barely begun to engage with what should be the focal point for their research, preparedness planning and advocacy”. Now doctors see climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.
  The Lancet calls for a “new public health advocacy movement” to usher in an unprecedented era of co-operation between widely divergent spheres such as disease, food, water, sanitation, shelter, settlements, extreme events, population and movement.”"
• Prince fails on sustainability – Building Design – A bit late getting to this one – Amanada takes on Charles: "This is where the speech unravelled for in making out “experimentation” to be a terrifying leap in the dark rather than something good based on hypotheses and a body of knowledge he came across as an intellectual Luddite, whose only solution is to retreat into a Hobbit-like world of organic earthy buildings and no cars."
• Carbon-effective refurbishment – Modern Building Services – Ant Wilson calls for an integrated approach to refurbished buildings: "At the same time, the lower metre could be well insulated and fitted with photovoltaics (PVs) and internally lined with phase-change boards. Emerging concentrated photovoltaic energy generation (CPV has around 1000 times less embedded energy than conventional PVs, and its price is falling rapidly, which will improve the cost-effectiveness of building-integrated PV in coming years."

admin News adaptation, aviation, buildings, cities, climatechange, comment, construction_industry, CPV, CSP, data, Economics, Europe, fossil_fuels, globalisation, gtd, healthcare, hobbit, monbiot, phase_change, Prince_Charles, procrastination, Productivity, PV, recession, refurbishment, scenario, Society, solar, UK

I’m a big fan of Charles Handy and his Hollywood model as I have mentioned before here, here and here.

A post from Paul on team working and BIM caught my eye recently:

…but I find that some of the issues relating to adoption of BIM are simply an extension of the issues faced in adopting any kind of collaborative approach. This usually boils down to an assertion that successful collaboration only 20% technology, the other 80% is all about people and process.

This, I think, applies equally to BIM. And others echo my thoughts. … in respect of the need to build teams, to get people out of their old-style silo approaches and embrace an integrated, collaborative approach. He seeks to encourage:

• Trust (commitment that we were all working together)
• Enthusiasm (that this was an exciting group of people to work with, and that it was a good project)
• Appreciation (of the various skills that everyone brought to the project)
• Mutual respect (often based upon previous project experiences)

The workshop process he advocates sounds very similar to the approaches employed on numerous UK projects undertaken on a “partnering” basis since the 1994 Latham Report. He also favours the co-location of teams.

This was closely followed by a post from Dave Pollard on Gen Y and a preferred style of working:

An interesting side-effect of this that I’ve observed in organizations with many young people is that, to Gen Y’ers, the ‘costs’ of compliance with ineffective constraints (processes, restrictions on software access, and rules) quickly exceed the value (job security), so they are finding workarounds that bypass these constraints and set up ‘markets’ for other ways of doing things (use of processes that they’ve imported from friends’ organizations or from previous experience, or use of free commercial software tools). The use of these unapproved ‘insecure’ processes and tools has set the stage in many organizations for a culture war between the older, command-and-control style of senior management and the new, peer-to-peer, workaround-based style of Gen Y’ers, powered mainly by social networking. As Shirky puts it (and Dave Snowden has illustrated in many case studies) “employees do better at sharing information with one another directly than when they go through official channels.” It enables them to do their jobs more effectively, and for many employees (especially the young) that’s more important than doing what they’re told. The result is an epic battle for control of what goes on in the organization, and in fact for control of the organization.

The move towards a new way of working seems inevitable to me in the next ten years (I’m being cautious with my timescales here). The ‘perfect storm’ of an increasingly disaffected workforce, a recession (which so far seems to have spawned many freelancers through choice or need) and the growth of the tools necessary to work in this ‘new’ collaborative way has enormous potential.

What does this mean for the industry? For clients, it brings both benefit and risk. This way of working will be cheaper for the client but less ‘legitimate’ than dealing with large consultancies. For instance, does the client have a contract with each and every consultant or is there a better way to broker such work?

And what does this mean for the large consultancies? Are they going to have to compete with the world of freelancing? What impact will this have?

The key, and current sticking point, as Dave Pollard alludes to, is the marketplace or brokerage network for managing relationships and legal matters. LinkedIn is a start but it’s not quite there yet. Does anyone know of anything which exists currently?

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