Elemental

These are my links for July 29th through August 2nd:

• You’re not bullet proof | Magazine Comment | Building – [Paywall] Great article on LLP: "However, in the event of an LLP going into administration, the partners are likely to lose their capital contributions. Other liabilities are paid out first: mortgages, liquidation fees, employees’ wages for the four months prior to the date of the insolvency order, occupational pension schemes and general unsecured creditors.<br />
  If the partners introduced money as capital, their claim comes after the unsecured creditors. If they introduced the money as debt, they would be treated as unsecured creditors in respect of this money, along with the other unsecured creditors. The partners would also be unsecured creditors in respect of any profits due to them."
• House 2.0: Why are we saving water? – "There are two very simple ways of achieving this goal, and one very complicated one. The simple ways are to 1) charge the right amount for the water and 2) insist that appliances sold should meet defined efficiency standards. The complicated way is what Part G is now insisting on. Which is to try and regulate the end user behaviour by making them purchase water efficient appliances when they are building a new house.<br />
  The problems with this approach are numerous. Firstly, it only applies to new homes. Thus regular power showers will still be available from stores, but you will only be able to buy them if you want to replace an existing bathroom. Can you imagine how infuriating that will be to people building a new home? …<br />
  So what will happen? People will get their eco-shower heads passed by the building inspector, and then rip them out and put in the power showers… Nothing illegal about this at all. It’s just what happens when you make unenforceable regulations like this."

admin News enforcement, G, governance, legal, LLP, Part, regulations, UK, water

These are my links for June 18th through June 21st:

• HAT Projects blog – Hana adds more to Charles' PQQ rant: "The big firms have clients – and particularly the weak public sector ones, who are bound by procurement guidelines – over the proverbial barrel. Not only is it then incredibly hard to promote less mainstream talent, but the big firms can then churn out standardised product that often doesn't really meet the brief, and their 'competitive' fees get boosted by the myriad services that weren't included in the original contract but that are actually essential, and chargeable by the hour. There is rarely an incentive for the consultancy to meet deadlines or budgets. That's not to say there aren't some good large firms, or good individuals within large firms, but the assumption that the service you get from a large firm is less risky than that you might get from a small one, is illogical."
• Net Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny – NYTimes.com – "Biomass proponents say it is a simple and proved renewable technology based on natural cycles. They acknowledge that burning wood and other organic matter releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just as coal does, but point out that trees and plants also absorb the gas. If done carefully, and without overharvesting, they say, the damage to the climate can be offset. But opponents say achieving that sort of balance is almost impossible, and carbon-absorbing forests will ultimately be destroyed to feed a voracious biomass industry fueled inappropriately by clean-energy subsidies. They also argue that, like any incinerating operation, biomass plants generate all sorts of other pollution, including particulate matter. State and federal regulators are now puzzling over these arguments."
• The Original Green By Steve Mouzon: A Must-Read If You Care About Sustainable Design : TreeHugger – "In the current world of green and sustainable design, so much weight is put on technology; the adding of solar power, high tech glass, qualifying for LEED. It is all about ADDING things. The lesson one learns from Mouzon, and from many heritage buildings, walkable communities and dense cities, is how well one can do with less, by taking stuff away, without any diminishment of comfort. Everyone is complaining lately about how much LEED costs and how poorly LEED buildings are performing, but they are complex things that have new and fancy equipment. But Mouzon points out old technologies are easy to maintain and adjust."
• Architect Frank Gehry talks LEED and the future of green building | Need to Know | PBS – More from Gehry on LEED. The role of government versus voluntary is discussed, but to no satisfactory conclusion. I'm sure he's wishing he never said anything to begin with. A throw away comment has caused a storm of attention on something he's obviously not that passionate one way or the other about.
• Unlocking the Potential of Empty Homes: Building Houses on Old Kent Road – "For years we’ve been told not to worry about the thousands of vacant flats and houses that are in regeneration schemes. “They’re all the process of development,” we were told. But they’re not now. The process and the development have both stopped. Somehow we have to find a way to turn these places back into homes."
• Fantastic Journal: A Short Post About Risk – "Vast amounts of time and effort go into answering these questions but it's a fruitless and largely pointless process. The PPQ limits the likelihood of any form of innovation as it is explicitly designed to stop practices getting jobs in areas where they aren't already working. They also disempower clients, removing from them any chance to exercise judgement or knowledge in selecting an architect. They denude any form of expertise and create a vast raft of bureaucracy and management bullsh*t in its place."
• A special report on water: For want of a drink | The Economist – Good high level article on global water supplies: "The problems caused by inexact terminology do not end here. Concepts like efficiency, productivity and saving attract woolly thinking. Chris Perry, an irrigation economist widely considered the high priest of water accounting, points out that “efficient” domestic systems involve virtually no escape of water through evaporation or irrecoverable seepage. “Efficient” irrigation, though, is often used to describe systems that result in 85% of the water disappearing in vapour. Similarly, water is not saved by merely using less of it for a purpose such as washing or irrigation; it is saved only if less is rendered irrecoverable."
• SOLUTIONS – Sustainability of Land Use and Transport in Outer Neighbourhoods – "The options represent generic Urban Patterns combined with appropriate transport policies. Currently outer-city areas (which includes suburbs, urban fringes, out-of-town developments and satellite settlements) have generally received less attention in spatial planning and urban design research. However, these areas are where most people live and where most new development is taking place. A unique feature of SOLUTIONS research is that it aims to understand the extent to which the sustainability of the design of cities at the Strategic Design scale and the Local Design (neighbourhood) scale are interdependent. This is achieved by carrying out the research within the frame work of strategic land use – transport computer models, and the development of equivalent 'Microsimulation' models at the local scale."
• ULI – Land Use and Driving – "Land Use and Driving summarizes the land use and climate change conclusions of three recent studies, Moving Cooler, Growing Cooler (both published by ULI) and Driving and the Built Environment, published by the Transportation Research Board at the National Academy of Sciences. On a national basis, the three studies show reductions in VMT and energy consumption of between 8 and 18 percent when compact development makes up 60 percent or more of all future development between now and 2050."

admin News biomass, cars, compact, development, driving, Gehry, LEED, PQQ, Procurement, regeneration, transport, urban, water

These are my links for April 7th through April 8th:

• Bleak and tortured: Kapoor’s Orbit is hardly an Olympic ideal | Building Blog – “the fact that Kapoor’s works seems to have garnered criticism from critics and the public alike renders it, in this regard at least, unique.
  what does it say?
  And this perhaps is Orbit’s biggest flaw and the reason why it has attracted such negative publicity. To the mayor of London and the London 2012 organising committee, who have been gushing profusely about the sculpture since it was unveiled, it clearly provides a big, pop-art symbol of the games that will doubtless look good on TV and divert attention away from the fact the London Olympic Park lacks much of the architectural ‘wow’ factor so clearly evident in Beijing.”
• Self Reliance Myth – Debunking some myths (read the whole post): “I hear people say they are growing 30%, 50%, even 70% of their own food. What they usually mean is that they are growing fruits and vegetables that make up some percentage of the total cost or weight—but not calories—of their food. Vegetables are high in wet weight, but low in calories. If you are growing 100% of your own vegetables, they provide about 15-20% of your daily calories, unless you are living mostly on potatoes or other starchy veggies. Most daily calories come from grains, meat, or dairy products. So if you’re not raising large-scale grains or animals, it’s unlikely that you are growing more than one-quarter of your own food, measured honestly by nutritional content. In that case, it’s not accurate to claim you are “70% food self sufficient.” …. Now we begin to see how difficult, and even undesirable, self sufficiency is. You won’t have time for much else if you are truly food self sufficient, even in a permaculture system.”
• IES » » In Practice: linking Revit to IES – “it is important to note that gbXML is not perfect and limitations transferring information between BIM and energy simulation software still exist. A key issue to understand, when looking to cycle through design options in a timely manner, is that there are some fundamental differences between an energy model for analysis and an architectural model used to generate construction documents. For example, many BIM elements do not support information exchange identifying the thermal performance characteristics that are needed to run energy analysis. …
  At early stages, if you take the perspective of the energy modeler they want to include the minimum amount of information to answer the question at hand, to reduce the variables and the analysis time. If you take the perspective of the architect, the visual character of the overall model is important to convey the design intent, as well as the details to express the layering of the idea(s).”
• marklynas.org | Why no party can afford to be anti-nuclear – “By attempting to be populist but appearing merely outdated, the Lib Dems have produced an energy policy that is by far the least realistic of the plans by the three major parties. On 19 March, the Conservatives launched a sensible plan for a carbon tax on electricity generation to encourage investment in both nuclear and renewable power. After years of dithering, Labour is now on track with its large-scale offshore wind programme, nuclear new-build and major grid upscaling.
  The Lib Dems are left with wishful thinking. The writer David MacKay summarised their approach in his book Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air as “Plan L”, which would leave a zero-carbon Britain dependent on imports for two-thirds of its electricity, and on coal for much of the rest. (This is “clean coal”—a technology yet to be invented on the required scale.)”
• House 2.0: Part G and the Water Calculator – Comment from Nick Grant on Mark’s Part G post: “The calculator approach is inherently flawed (on many levels) but cannot easily be dropped as it was voted on by ‘Stakeholders’ and became policy. There is a critique on my website which led to a review for CLG. Unfortunately the report of the review has not been published as I would rather reference that.
  Many of us find it really draining to have to put so much effort into debunking seriously flawed policies as you regularly flag up on your blog. We would rather get on with designing more sustainable buildings (and renovations) but have to spend huge amounts of time and effort (usually unpaid) arguing against supposedly green policies that are making things worse.”
• Awash in Awareness: Knowing a Product’s “Water Footprint” May Help Consumers Conserve H2O: Scientific American – “Concerns over greenhouse gas emissions have vaulted the term “carbon footprint” into mainstream vernacular. Now, by promoting the concept of a “water footprint” with the goal of including it on product labels, researchers are hoping to draw similar attention to how drastically we’re draining our most precious resource. As the use of a footprint to gauge water use gains popularity, however, researchers are struggling to reach a consensus on how best to measure that footprint so the public understands its full impact.”
• Urban Resilience § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM – Fascinating article on resilience: “From a systems standpoint, what cities are doing is creating a network—which in itself could strengthen resilience. Knowledge generated in one place could be used in another, and experiences and best practices could be shared. But this power shift raises an interesting governance question, as every organization in place today when it comes to global governance—the CBD, the United Nations, the Law of the Sea—is based on the nation state. Now on the sidelines, a very powerful network of cities is growing, sharing information technology, and driving an ambitious sustainability agenda.”

admin News BIM, calculator, complexity, Economics, footprint, G, nuclear, Olympics, Part, permaculture, resilience, Sustainability, urbanism, water

These are my links for May 5th through May 11th:

• BREEAM: BREEAM Extranet – Elements of the BREEAM Extranet are now available to all with a public log-in option – loving how BREEAM are continuing to open up to all.
• Multiple monitors boost productivity by 35.5% | 18 Feb 2009 | ComputerWeekly.com – Some bias in that Fujitsu have an interest in selling more screens, but good to see some data on something I've suspected a long time (and I'm still hankering after Terry Pratchett's 6 screen set up): "Employees can perform a typical knowledge-sector job much more efficiently at a three-display workspace than at a conventional one, according to a laboratory survey by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), supported by Fujitsu.
  Fujitsu said this is particularly relevant for jobs where digital information has to be processed very frequently, as is the case for scientists, editors, engineers or insurance company employees.
  Overall, the study showed that larger screen areas increase productivity, and with the three-display workspace interconnected to form one desktop, Fraunhofer IAO scientists recorded increases in productivity of 35.5%."
• Andrew Winston – " I have a new book coming out this summer called Green Recovery. It focuses on going green in hard economic times. It lays out ways to get lean quickly, which can help companies survive today and preserves capital to invest in people and innovation. This plan can prepare companies to emerge from the downturn in a much better competitive position.
  My publisher is making a core part of the book available for free now. You can download my special report here:
  www.tinyurl.com/WinstonReport
  This pdf includes the introduction and the core chapter on getting lean. The other chapters on how the green wave is evolving, and how to get smart, get creative, and get (your people) going will be out by August in the full book."
• Andrew Winston: Is Bjorn Lomborg Dangerous or Helpful? – "Lomborg has a long habit of tilting at windmills that he mostly imagines. His most famous argument is that we shouldn't prioritize climate change over other pressing social priorities like poverty alleviation — as if they're all separate. The poorest people in the world are energy poor and don't have access to clean water — the two biggest environmental challenges of our time. He's always setting up false tradeoffs to establish his more "reaonsable" middleground…
  Lomborg's arguments are more subtle than he usually gets credit for. Probably 75% of what he says is dead on — but that's what makes him so dangerous. It's the other 25% that gets us in trouble."
• Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Procrastiflation: Procrastination + Inflation – I'm a procrastiflator!: "The longer a task goes un-completed, the harder it is to do it.
  If you say you're going to call John Doe on Monday, and you don't, and you continue to procrastinate on Tuesday, and then Wednesday, it becomes harder and harder with each passing day to ever complete the task."
• Dave Gorman: Limescale – Hilarious post from Dave Gorman in which he fixes the economy by rerouting hard water from London to Scotland.
• Commissioning strategy to be included in revisions to Part L – Building Sustainable Design – "The proposed changes to Part L were due to come into effect in April 2010, but this target is now likely to be missed. A government spokesman said the April date “is becoming increasingly challenging and the revisions to the regulations could be put back to October 2010”."
• Wales introduces green building standard – PlanningResource – A sign of things to come for the rest of the country? "Housing developers will have to meet the Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3 while non-residential buildings will need to achieve the BREEAM ‘Very Good’ standard.
  The legislation will come into effect on 1 September 2009.
  Davidson said: "I am determined to use the planning system to move towards zero-carbon buildings. We need to do everything we can to make new buildings, from our homes through to our offices, as environmentally friendly as possible. The new policy will play a key role in achieving this.""
• Defra, UK – Sustainable Development – Need to write a sustainable policy? "The Stretching the Web tool was developed with the aim of helping practitioners to integrate Sustainable Development into their policy making as well as project or programme work. The web is a simple graphic that allows you to easily explore a broad range of key positive and negative impacts."
• Aecom buys Savant to boost European presence – Building – More familiar names go, as AECOM assimilates Faber Maunsell and EDAW further – now to be known as AECOM Europe. Follows the news that Whitby Bird now to be known only as Ramboll.

admin News book, BREEAM, chapyter, construction_industry, CSH, debate, DEFRA, economy, environmentalists, extranet, free, green, gtd, hard, lomborg, names, News, offices, part_L, philosophy, policy, Productivity, recession, Sustainability, wales, water, winston

These are my links for June 24th through June 26th:

• My M&M’s® – Get Your Favorite Faces on Your Favorite Candy – Upload a Picture and Message – Completely OT, but really? Printing photos on M&M's.
• Sex and the City and Handbag Insanity » Transition Culture – Poor Rob is stunned that women rent handbags in NY. I don't have the heart to tell him they do it in the UK too…
• workinproperty: Spinning Blocks in Dubai – OMG. In fact OMGG. Where do I even start on this one. Twisting to optimise orientation would be almost forgiveable, but on the occupants whim? Barking…
• Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (National) RAB says UK’s proposed renewable energy target is achievable – 3.3% of 15% to come from built environment.
• GOOD Magazine: The Life And Death Of Green Design – Living on The Huffington Post – Excellent article on LEED from Huffington Post: "Like any standardized test, LEED works best as a measurement tool, not a paradigm shifter. Change has to come from the architects themselves."
• BeGreen Launches First-of-Its-Kind Calculator to Help Businesses Achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED(R)) Certification – The tool allows businesses to calculate the number of RECs required to meet the Green Power LEED certification standard, based on actual or estimated energy usage.
• Home – The Carbon Trust Standard – The Carbon Trust Standard certifies that an organisation has genuinely reduced its carbon footprint and is committed to making further reductions year on year.
• Where Has All the Water Gone? | The American Prospect – via the Triple Bottom Line. "The world may not exactly be running out of water, but it is running out of clean water."

mel starrs News BERR, blogger, calculator, carbon_footprint, certification, crisis, Dubai, Economics, global, LEED, orientation, OT, renewable, renewables, skyscrapers, water

What I’ve been reading about:

• Building cities from scratch in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. – By Witold Rybczynski – Slate Magazine – Slide show showing two approaches to new cities in the Middle East
• The Sustainable City–Ecological Dream or Technocratic Nightmare? – Something I've been giving thought to recently. I'm veering towards the Jane Jacobs view…
• Energy Companies Fear Renewables Bubble – Fifty-two percent of those surveyed believe that high valuations are a factor restricting growth in the sector
• Instapaper – via LifeHacker – a way of keeping track of longer articles you want to read later
• …as sustainability chief moves west – Building Design – Trevor Butler leaves BDP, moves to Canada and starts a company called Archineers.
• Waterfootprint.org: Water footprint and virtual water – Not surprised to see this pop up on my radar. The next logical step…

mel starrs News aggregator, calculator, competitors, development, Dubai, international, planning, Productivity, renewable, sustainability_water, tools, toread, water

These are my links for May 20th through May 23rd:

• 800-CEO-READ Blog: Thoughts on Seth Godin’s “How To Read a Business Book” – reading (business) books is an act of mediation. It is a mental refuge for you to explore your thoughts and feelings about work, but also life as a whole.
• Building physicists wanted – PI insurance for low carbon consultants is higher because insurance companies see providing advice on sustainability as high risk.
• Water regs to cut waste and scalding – Building – The main change is aimed at cutting water use to 125 litres per person per day in new dwellings, just below the limit set in the Code for Sustainable Homes for a level one and two home.
• That bubble, reputation – Building – Failure to comply with the law will always be unethical and damage reputations. But conduct may not be contrary to the law yet still damage your reputation.
• Go with your gut – intuition is more than just a hunch, says Leeds research | Press releases | Media | University of Leeds – Research from my alma mater reinforcing Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.
• To Fight Global Warming We Must Tax All Recreational Exercise – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog – I'm sure Steve Levitt wrote this as a joke, but it misses the mark on so many levels. And his assumptions for calcs are miles off. Good comments from readers which are worth a look.
• Think debate: Are engineers the new architects? – Building Design – Had the pleasure of seeing this 'live' at Think08. Good points from both sides and if the questions is changed to which would you rather be, then both make a compelling case for engineering…
• eco town round up – Martin has gathered together an impressive list of articles on eco-towns from around the interweb.

mel starrs News Building_Regs, construction_industry, debate, eco, Economics, ethics, globalwarming, Housing, insurance, joke, Psychology, READING, research, think08, water

I almost fell off the sofa last week when I saw this ad on TV. According to the Construction Skills website:

‘The new advertising campaign ‘Make Your Mark’ features iconic buildings, which come to life in a specially animated style, evoking the sense of dreams becoming reality. For the first time this year we will be running an interactive TV campaign, where by young people can pass us their details and opt into the on going email communication campaign through the red button on their television set. To maintain recognition with our core target audience, the advert has a distinctive voiceover from T4 presenter June Sarpong to reach young women without alienating young men.’

The accompanying website can be found at www.bconstructive.co.uk. It’s ok, but I think they’ve missed a trick by not emphasising the sustainability side of things. Under building services engineering they describe the role as:

‘Your house or college wouldn’t be much fun to be in without a building services engineer. For a start, it would be cold and dark – and you’d be pretty smelly! It’s their job to design, install and maintain the essential services such as gas, electricity, water, heating and lighting – as well as many you probably don’t give much thought to. These all help to make buildings comfortable and healthy places to live and work in.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, you’ve probably already got a healthy interest in science, especially physics. On top of this, you’ll also need to be keen on protecting the environment, because you’ll be making sure that all types of energy are used properly and efficiently. For more info on what it takes to make it as a building services engineer, visit www.cibse.org.’

They also reckon an associate architect earns £5k more than a senior engineer. Hmmm. Not sure about that. The latest salary survey (registration required – published May last year – which means a new one out imminently) at BSJ puts senior building services design engineers (30 y.o. working towards chartership) on a national average of £32,538, £4.5k more than the bConstructive site. Whilst RIBA have a private practice salaried 30 y.o. architect on £31,500. Score! The most the architects make is £67,000 by the time they hit 50 and have their own practice, whilst BSE has a Partner, chartered in Yorkshire at 45 y.o. on £61,500 max. Not too shoddy.

How can we persuade young folk to become engineers? If the figures above don’t persuade them, then what more can we do? Attracting young engineers is currently vying with the Peter Principle (a post for another day) as the biggest challenge facing the industry today. Do we know how to appeal to the myspace generation? It should be easy – compare building simulation to creating cities in SimCity? Fairly similar skills required (the ability to think in 3D, think ahead, visualise, etc).

Is the key schools? Would a leaflet from an employer be enough to persuade someone sitting in a classroom to do a degree in architectural engineering?

No, I think we need a groovy TV show a la CSI – apparently enrollment in forensics degrees have skyrocketed…

(If readers have an interest in youth culture and the whole myspace phenomenon, Danah at Apophenia has some good observations)

Update: Just found this link on BBC :

Writers are being offered £35,000-worth of prizes to feature engineering characters on stage, screen or radio.

::via Archinect

mel starrs Uncategorized advertising campaign, Architecture, BBC, bConstructive site, Building Physics, electricity, Energy, Engineering, gas, GBP, heating, interactive TV, lighting, Peter Principle, senior building services, simulation, statistics, Sustainability, water, www.bconstructive.co.uk, www.cibse.org