Archive for April, 2006
Learn, zero, sell, people…
I’m unashamedly pinching my topic today from a great post over at Inhabitat last week on ‘The Next Big Thing in Green Building‘. Guest writer Jared summarises his finding from the Developing Green conference. His four key ideas were learn, zero, sell and people. What I love about this medium (the internet) is the realisation [...]
Going Nuclear?
photo by Captain Smurf via Flickr
The debate over nuclear power rumbles on. Patrick Moore (a founding member of Greenpeace, and nothing to do with Sky at Night) has weighed in on the pro side at the Washington Post and then with a debate. The pro-nuclear site World Nuclear Association has a good summary.
I’ve been searching [...]
The changing role of the building services engineer
Last September an ‘open mike’ piece in Building magazine written by Bill Ireland of White Young Green addressed the identity crisis facing building services engineers. The piece (subscription required) mirrored my own views:
‘Over the past three decades the M&E engineer has moved on from just designing the ‘pipes and wires’ that service a building, [...]
2ºC rise - who’s in control of the thermostat?
Driving to the gym on Friday morning, I was somewhat bemused by a story reported on BBC radio news that Tony Blair had promised not to let the global increase in temperature rise above 2ºC. To me, it sounded as if he had control of the thermostat, which seemed a little extraordinary, if not a [...]
Impending Global Energy Consumption Explosion
Came across some scary figures via this article (opens a pdf file) written by 2 Stanford MBA students.
By their reckoning, the US accounts for 4% of the world’s population and uses 25% of world energy consumption. A sobering thought on it’s own. But their point is that in general global ‘economies’ appear to be holding [...]
The Part L Debacle
It’s all been so horribly predictable. SBEM’s reputation lies in tatters, IES are promising their software will be ready end of next week, and Building Control haven’t even been trained yet. I spoke to Hevacomp late last week. Their SAP 2005 software (which was approved last version, SAP 2001) needs to be [...]
The views from RICS
Interesting article here
Six years on from the Government’s publication of its strategy to promote sustainable construction - “Building a Better Quality of Life”, RICS asked quantity surveyors to assess how well the industry has progressed in becoming more energy efficient and socially or environmentally responsible.
Unsurprisingly, developers are seen as the stakeholders contributing least to the [...]
You can’t manage what you don’t measure…
It’s nice to sit down with an enlightened client who wants to monitor the building once it’s built. Scary how seldom it happens.
There are a number of resources out there to assist the design team and the client, and with TM39* ‘Building Energy Metering’ from CIBSE now cited in the Building Regulations Part L2A, it [...]
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Communicating sustainable solutions for the built environment. News, views and reviews. I reserve the right at all times to change my mind on any opinions offered here.
