Elemental

These are my links for October 30th through November 5th:

• GEO DYNAMICS – How sustainable are heat pumps? -:- Construct Ireland – Great, but long, article on the pros and cons of air source heat pumps. Level of detail is just right, with plenty of graphs and good argument.
• BSRIA review of NG Bailey’s Solais House – Great review of Solais House. I hadn't realised that it was a spec office before, having seen David Frise present it recently. That explains why it's aesthetically…dubious. Despite this constraint, promises to be a great example – although we await the POE results.
• A place for PVC in a sustainable world? | Forum For The Future – Fascinating article on PVC. Still not convinced about the green guide rating of A for PVC windows, but things are getting better: "It’s not the first time that TNS has wrestled with the issue. It originally grappled with the stuff in 2000, when, with the support of the UK Environment Agency, it investigated whether PVC could have any place in a sustainable society. The answer was a cautious ‘yes’ – providing the industry addressed some of its most pressing challenges."
• Sir Nicholas Grimshaw – People – Dwell – Great quote from Grimshaw on sustainability: "You’ve got to do a bit of lateral thinking on these green issues. It’s quite important to be pragmatic. The one thing we have to watch very carefully is polarization"
  Unusual to find a pragmatic architect – consultants and engineers usually much more pragmatic as they don't play the same zero-sum game as architects are forced into.
• Footprint » You should have been at the RIBA tonight… – Intriguing – anyone know anything more on Bill's views?: "Dunster also made a strong plea on behalf of the Code for Sustainable Homes, calling it ‘an enlightened piece of legislation in danger of being dumbed down by the UK-GBC and the ZeroCarbonHub.’"
• News : NDS – From Mandelson's Hinto Engineering Lecture: "Snow didn’t use the term, but he was angling at the idea that Britain was becoming a scientific knowledge economy. This is certainly the case now. We need to understand more clearly than ever the way in which our pure science and applied science underwrite our prosperity, not least so we can strengthen their contribution to economic growth.
  The wider costs of any failure to do this are very high, both for our own economy and society, but also globally. Snow was worried about how a scientifically illiterate society might fail to feed the expanding populations of the developing world. That concern is still very much with us, and to it our society would have to add the massive problem of decarbonsiation and the management of our environmental impact on the planet. "
• Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment » Blog Archive » Never Waste a Good Crisis – Another report added to my 'must read and comment pile': "Government, as a client, needs to understand the enlightened thinking that better and more intelligent designs improve patients’ recovery in hospitals and learning outputs in schools. So, rather than reduce the number of schools and hospitals being built, it must sponsor smarter and more productive solutions and reduce the amount of money wasted on the procurement process. For Government as a policy maker, the challenge is to create an environment that incentivises innovation and speeds up the modernisation process."
• Thoughts on Copenhagen: Nicholas Stern | News | Architects Journal – Good series of interviews from Hattie in the AJ, on COP15, including this one from Nick Stern: "Energy consumed in the construction and operation of buildings is responsible for more than one third of total energy use. According to the fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, the building sector has great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
  It concluded that the energy consumption of new and existing buildings can be cut between 30 and 50 per cent without significantly increased costs.
  Architects, together with other built environment professionals, have the strategic and technical skills to deliver buildings that both lead to lower emissions and withstand those impacts of climate change that are now inevitable. With existing technologies, these buildings are now affordable. New technologies are constantly being created. What is required is the vision, leadership and commitment to make a low-carbon future reality."
• Thoughts on Copenhagen: Pooran Desai | News | Architects Journal – The run up to COP15 has started, with this snippet the most interesting thing I found in AJ's recent piece, from Pooran Desai: "To achieve effective change, we need elegant solutions and a sensible systems-based approach to zero carbon; for example, recognising electricity as a pooled resource and not unnecessarily converting buildings into power stations. Land use is as critical as carbon emissions."

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Building have the full transcript of Egan’s speech at the Common’s reception here, and I would urge everyone to read the full thing, but I’ve pulled out my favourite bits below. The press have jumped on his comments about the housebuilders (probably because they make the best headlines) but there is some other juicy stuff in there.

It is a two edged sword.  For those days when you’re hitting your head against a brick wall, thinking “Am I mad? Why do I bother? Is it me?”, Egan’s comments assure you that, so, it’s not you, it is the industry and it’s a bit poorly.  Not quite broken, but not too healthy either.  On the other hand, he said all this 10 years ago and very little has changed.

On the importance of teamwork and supply chains:

…first of all, you have to work as a team. If you don’t work as a team you simply are going to fail. You’re not going to achieve all it is that you have to do. Secondly, you design the whole project on a computer versus a target that you’re trying to achieve, and why not try to be really good and use the world-best? Search for improvement within your supply chain, release the value that they’ve got in their supply chain and build it into your project.

On the lunacy of lowest cost tendering:

I think lowest cost tendering (and I think the government is absolutely the culprit here, they were very bad as the main buyer of projects, still buying the education department with lower cost tendering) is absolutely ridiculous.

You see, the problem is that until you’ve designed the project you don’t know what it’s cost, and it costs you 10% to design it. How can you get a rational tender? How can you get a number that means anything? It doesn’t mean anything. It means very little. It seems impossible if the government is buying 40 or 50% of all the projects, all the construction in the country, and they just simply aren’t trying to be a good client. I don’t see how the industry will ever become fully competitive.

And pulling those two strands together:

And the point to remember is that it’s a team that does it – a designer, a construction team a supply chain and so on. Working hard together they can produce a good cost. But they can’t do it if they work separately. And lowest cost tendering starts them off as separate groups.

Developers are as much to blame as the government:

It isn’t just the government that is a bad buyer, developers are too. They’re so anxious to dump all of the risk onto the industry that they don’t actually grasp what the enormous cost improvement could be if they shared the cost of the 10% design, and they shared the risk.

Egan suggests the industry goes back and rereads Rethinking Construction.  It is available (after registration) from the Constructing Excellence website.

mel starrs Uncategorized Egan, Rethinking Construction