FutureHaus

Whatever platitudes our politician’s come up with to justify their negligent lack of investment in energy efficiency and low carbon supplies, I believe that we must now accept the inevitable; the cost of running our homes is likely to increase dramatically! In response to this I believe that the FutureHaus will be sold not on what it cost to run but instead on the energy yield and income that they can deliver to occupants.  I believe that the design of the home is on the threshold of a period of rapid and dramatic change.  Energy costs and concern regarding energy security, coupled with technological innovation will see the home moving from a consumer to a producer of energy. 

Smart systems will store excess energy in household appliances including hot water cylinders, fridges and freezers and new technologies will make battery back-up an affordable option to run the home overnight.  A new generation of small scale, building integrated wind turbines, concealed in roof ridge tiles, will silently and invisibly harness the wind to provide the majority of power during the winter months.  Even human waste will be processed within the home by small scale anaerobic digesters, designed to look like other domestic appliances, that can be integrated into the interior of the home and provide both heat and power, along with limitless amounts of compost to feed the organic fruit and veg grown in the rooftop allotment.

The major challenge of our age will be the retrofitting of our existing building stock; 80% of which will still be in use by 2050.  This represents a massive opportunity for trusted organisations to offer customers the advice and help that they require to bring their homes up to the carbon positive standards required.  As new green technologies mature, their costs will reduce making them affordable solutions for the vast majority of customers.  We will need to find affordable, less disruptive ways of insulating large numbers of solid wall housing and this offers a significant opportunity for job creation and growth in the wider UK economy.  The technology in the home will need to be managed and updated and this will see the growth in new service offerings that will maintain the performance of the home in a similar way to the role that the garage plays in helping keep your car on the road.

As homes move towards zero carbon and on to carbon positive, a series of exciting opportunities will emerge.  The home will be able to become the fuel station for the car, charging its batteries with clean solar energy.  Solar hydrogen panels will provide the fuel for a cars hydrogen fuel cell, with the same system used to power and recharge the home when the car is in the garage.  Technologies that store thermal and electrical energy will develop rapidly and will remove the concerns that customers may have about the intermittent nature of renewable technologies.

Timber used for construction will continue to expand, but there will be an increasing demand for locally grown timber that creates forestry jobs in the local market and where the value added through converting lumber into timber products benefits the local economy.  In areas like the UK where land for forestry is restricted this is likely to drive the development of engineered timber products like Structural insulated Panels (SIP’s) and structures made from round wood, forestry thinning’s, will use limited amounts of material in very structurally efficient arrangements.

Timber waste will be converted into wood flour or chippings and used in combination with recycled post-consumer waste plastics to form a range of extruded sections that will be able to be used for both structural and non-structural application.  Waste paper and card will be used to make high performance structural tubes, achieving the carbon sequestration benefits of timber while reprocessing and upcycling locally derived waste.  Ultimately the notion of waste will become obsolete, with all material reprocessed to create new, high value products, creating jobs and helping to grow our local green economy.

Manufacturing technologies including 3D printing and CNC machining will allow manufacturing to be relocated from the Far East and undertaken within local markets once more, saving cost, time and emissions associated with existing long logistics supply chains.  New manufacturing technology will offer the possibility for products like flat pack furniture to be designed and manufactured in store,  allowing all customers the opportunity to become designer, customising products to satisfy their own unique requirements.

Ultimately I believe that we are on the threshold of a new age where homes are designed not simply to provide shelter but to make a positive contribution to the economic and environmental as well as the physical wellbeing of occupants.  This will demand new solar settlements, innovative residential design and integrated and intelligent utilities.  If anyone out there fancies joining me in the quest to develop the FutureHaus, along with the settlements that it will create, please give me a call!

Save Sainsbury's Greenwich

So it is now official, Sainsbury's are to close their pioneering low energy supermarket in Greenwich after being open for less than 15 years and if approved it will be demolished to make way for an IKEA.  So a building that was awarded the RIBA Journal Sustainability Award in 2000 and was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the largest prize in British Architecture, the same year will be torn down after such a short period of time with barely a passing comment.


Is the sun about to set on
Sainsbury's Greenwich
 after less than 15 years trading?

We'll not as far as I am concerned!  You see I spent nearly five years of my early career developing the concept for what was then a pioneering development.  My team spent long hours designing a building that would redefine retail architecture and challenge the belief at the time, that all retailers required from their buildings was something to keep the customers, the technology required to moderate the internal environment and the fridges and freezers out of the rain.  The norm was for a dark, windowless interior, that was ultimately little more than a poorly built and badly performing shed, with no consideration given to customer comfort.  Lighting, heating and cooling were all achieved with inefficient mechanical systems, that wasted energy and did nothing to improve the conditions that customers were expected to endure.

So why is it considered obsolete and ready for demolition after such a short period of time?  On one level it is a victim of its own success; as since opening it has been well received by customers, achieving the highest Customer Satisfaction Index score for any Sainsbury's within the first year of trading.  As the number of people living on the peninsular has increased the store trade has outgrown the building and Sainsbury's want to move 500 meters away to a new store that will be three times the size and offer food and non-food along with an internet hub to serve online customers.  So the building is well liked and successful but still cannot find an alternative use?

So this is what gets me really annoyed, the reason why it cannot be relet to another tenant is that Sainsbury's will have in place a restrictive covenant on the building as part of their deal with the developer of their new store, preventing it from being used for food retailing.  I believe that this is anti-competitive and is a flagrant abuse of the planning system which originally granted consent for the development.  I have good memories of many meetings with English Partnerships and the London Borough of Greenwich as they considered our proposals and ensured that they were in keeping with local and national planning policies.  This process placed restrictions on the eventual consent including a requirement to review and reduce car parking provision over time and another to prevent extension in the first 10 years.  What none of us envisaged at the time was that once consent was granted it could be removed by Sainsbury's without any further democratic consideration and that by granting consent for retail use they could both have their cake and eat it, benefitting from the enhanced value of the asset that the consent crystallised but able to limit its scope so that only non-competing retailers could benefit when it no longer fulfilled Sainsbury's requirements.

To destroy an exemplar of
sustainable design best practice
 would be an act of vandalism
 that must not be permitted

This cannot be right.  If this restrictive covenant were not in place I am sure that there would be a long list of food retailers who would be only too willing to move in and pay the generous rents common in the sector.  The buildings would continue to be economically sustainable, the community would have a greater choice of where to shop and the environment would not be impacted by the destruction of carbon intensive construction after such a pitifully short period of time.  I feel very passionate about this; no architect should see their work destroyed as a result of underhand, un-democratic behaviour and not object.  The building is a good building and should not be demolished.  It must become a test case for the rhetoric that is now widely exposed by the sector to justify its dominant position in the nation's food supply chain.  It is not acceptable to promise communities sustainable development to gain planning consents simply to renege on those undertakings when it suits.  The government must urgently review restrictive covenant legislation to close this anti-competition loophole to prevent more perfectly serviceable buildings being destroyed to safeguard the self-interest of food retailers or others who would limit the use of land or buildings that they no longer require.  A free market must demand that this is the case and that the local communities that grant consent must be the ultimate arbiters of what can and cannot be done on any site.  If not, there is a real threat that the sector will be painted with the anti-competitive criticism that Tesco has previously been accused of.

 

Please support our campaign to #stopIKEA and #SaveSainsburysGreenwich by signing our online petition at:

 

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/stopikea

Archicouture

ar·chi·cou·ture

/ˈärkiˌ/ko͞oˈto͝or/

Noun

1. The art or practice of designing and constructing buildings from the outside in.

2. Architecture where the style and appearance of a building is of ultimate importance

3. The creation of hollow and meaningless iconography which is ultimately inhumane and irrelevant to the concerns of our age.

Synonyms:

Architecture
Couture
 
While studying to be an architect I remember a lecture from Jeremy Lowe, our History tutor, on the evolution of styles in architecture.  It transpires that there are three distinct stages in the evolution of any particular style.  Initially, when a new style is first established it manifests itself in a rather crude manner.  Once people have worked out the underlying rules and principles and mastered their application, the trues and purest manifestation of the style emerges, often referred to as the “high” period; for example “high gothic”.  The final phase in the evolution of a style is characterised by pastiche as characteristics, elements and forms become over-elaborate and exaggerated, often to the point where the original characteristics are caricatured and become almost unrecognisable.

So you may ask, what has all this “arty bollocks” got to do with buildings, architecture and sustainability?  Well, it is my belief that we are on the threshold of a period of rapid and revolutionary change and that when we examine the buildings that we are making now it is clear that we are witnessing the death of modernism, as we make way for a new sustainable architecture.  Many of the most iconic buildings realised over the recent past are caricatures, the architectural equivalent of “gurning”, with designers trying to outdo each other with more complex and contorted form; with ever diminishing relevance.  Take for example, the Olympic swimming pool, the Walkie Talkie or at a smaller scale the ArcelorMittal Orbit.  Each one invests significant money, materials and energy to take a perverse shape which offers little or no additional value to the user experience.

Olympic Swimming Pool:
"Would you like wedges with that"?

The swimming pool was too small during the games, requiring two large wedges to be jammed into its flanks to accommodate the required seating.  While I am sure that it will win the Stirling Prize next year, because it is so achingly beautiful, in a time of austerity, I believe that we should demand more than dumb beauty from a public building costing more than £250 million and let’s not forget that the practice pool is not even naturally lit and the tall, arching north east and south west facades are fully glazed with no external shading and will suffer from both excessive solar gains and thermal losses.

The car melting genius of
the Walkie Talkie building

The Walkie Talkie building, nearing completion in the City, is only distinguished by is bulky deep plan and the random curves of its facades.  There have already been complaints that the fully glazed, concave south elevation is causing some unforeseen impacts on it immediate context, acting as an enormous focusing mirror and cooking cars and people on the surrounding streets!  Just think what could have been achieved if the manipulation of the suns energy had been part of the brief for the development rather than an unfortunate, unintended consequence!  It could have resulted in the design of an office tower where every desk received generous daylight, where glare was prevented by intelligent façade design and where every occupant was within 7 metres of a window and a view.

The contorted, "gurning" nightmare
 that is the Orbit Tower

In many ways I find the Orbit Tower the most disappointing of all; I have a great respect for the work of Anish Kapoor and the way he combines material and form to change our perception of ourselves and the world we inhabit.  I believe that the ability of the artist to make people think differently about the planet and our relationship with it is a powerful weapon in the battle to prevent climate change.  Works like his Cloud Gate in Chicago harness form to change the viewer’s perception of both the city and themselves.  However, the Orbit Tower, in my opinion, lacks any philosophical intent and instead resorts to meaningless shape making.  There is an almost wilful disregard for structural logic and materials efficiency that results in a structure lacking in grace and elegance, looking like it is the aftermath of a catastrophic structural failure.  Surely not the finest work from the team at Arup’s, although it is slightly reassuring to see that engineers are as susceptible to the cult of the meaningless icon as architects are.

So I would like to propose that we create a new category for these stylistically driven projects, “archicouture” and let it embrace any work that places shape making and formal gymnastics at the centre of the design process.  Then let’s make a rule that says, like couture in fashion, it is only acceptable for work of this type to be undertaken for the sole use and occupation by wealthy, private clients and that these buildings are only used by the public on a totally discretionary basis.  Then we can focus our resources on the development of projects that are anti-iconic and instead are focused on the wants, needs and desires of their intended users.  We can insist that proposals are philosophically rather than stylistically driven and that procurement processes judge intent rather than appearance when selecting teams for all publically accessible buildings including schools, hospitals, shops, offices and crucially housing.  The revolution, as Billy Bragg once said, is only a tee shirt away, so let’s make it an organic, fairtrade, unbleached and vegetable dyed one!

Let There be Light

Someone famous once described architecture as the manipulation of space with light and it has long been understood that daylight has a powerful effect on both our physical and mental wellbeing.  So you would have thought that we would have reached a consensus about what represents adequate daylighting within a building and would only allow buildings that meet this standard.  Well surprisingly this is far from the case and in fact many of our most iconic offices are badly lit, hampering the effectiveness of the people forced to occupy them!

 

Architecture the manipulation
of space with light

It is interesting to note that while there are standards defined in the Building Regulations for most aspects of building design those relating to natural lighting are not very onerous, only requiring a bare minimum of a 2% daylight factor for 80% of the floor area.  This means that a fifth of any floorplate can be built that does not meet even this minimum standard.  In a typical city tower with a central core the area of the floor adjacent to the core and any desks in this location rely almost exclusively on artificial lighting.

Interestingly, the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for offices awards additional credits where 80% of the floorplate achieves a 4% daylight factor.  This is not a standard that the majority of space currently under construction is able to achieve given the excessive depth of most floorplates.

I was recently at a seminar where a developer was extolling the virtues of their highly sustainable new office development that had floors of between 12 and 18 metres from the window to the core!  While as an occupant you would be aware that there was a window, it would be provide virtually no light to your workstation if you were unfortunate enough to be sat nearest to the core.

The issue of the depth of the plan does not only affect daylighting, but also has a major effect on the occupant’s views out.  Research has shown that a good quality view is composed of elements that are close to the window, elements in the middle ground and also parts which are more distant, but to be able to perceive the exterior to this level of detail through a window requires the viewer to be quite close.

Under BREEAM a maximum of distance of 7 metres from workstation to window is defined as achieving a beneficial view out and is acknowledged by awarding a credit for buildings which achieve this standard.  If this arrangement is applied to an office floorplate with windows on both sides it would result in an overall depth of 14 metres which would also be well and evenly lit due to lighting being delivered from two sides rather than one.
 

Careful disposition of solid and glass
façade materials help prevent glare

To ensure that the workplace is comfortable it is important that glare is avoided, particularly on computer screens.  This is impossible to achieve on fully glazed facades which allow in large amounts of light but in an unregulated manner, over lighting workstations nearest to the windows but not making any significant improvement to lighting levels of the desks further into the interior. 

Façade designs that combine solid and glazed sections can overcome this problem, particularly if the façade module is coordinated with the distance between desks.  A solid to glass ratio of around 50/50 allows sufficient glass for views and daylighting while providing highly insulated solid sections that protect screens from glare and prevent unwanted solar gains and thermal losses.

It is also important where the glass is positioned as the higher the window the better the daylight distribution.  Glass below desk level provides little or no benefit to occupants and often displays just how untidy many offices are!
 

External solar shading controls
unwanted solar gains

The orientation of windows also has a significant effect on the comfort, or otherwise, of the people who inhabit the building.  North facing windows allow in diffused daylight with little direct sun, so thermal gains are prevented at the expense of increased thermal losses.  Conversely, south facing glass will experience excessive solar gain and glare if adequate external shading is not incorporated.

However it is the east and west facades which present the greatest challenge as the sun hits these surfaces at a low angle which is hard to regulate and which can cause glare and discomfort deep within the interior.  West facing glazing also presents issues of solar gain, delivering as it does a spike in heat at the end of the working day when the building has already been heated by equipment and people.  Buffering of west facing facades with other uses like escape stairs or toilets can protect office areas from these unwanted gains.

Natural lighting is an essential component of a well tempered environment and deserves careful consideration and intelligent design if it is to be delivered in a manner that enhances the perceived wellbeing of occupants, rather than causing them discomfort.  Too much or too little daylight will have direct impacts upon the productivity of occupants which can ultimately affect the productivity of an entire organisation.

As the great Kevin McCloud put it:

“Integrity and authenticity and quality and appropriateness take a little more work than simple-minded beauty”

I passionately believe that user centred design will revolutionise the design of buildings and will ultimately help to create a new sustainable architecture, in which philosophy, intent and purpose replace vacuous beauty, meaningless style and contorted form and I for one cannot wait! 

 

Move me Mother I’m Burning!

It seems strangely appropriate to be discussing PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) annual "Low Carbon Economy Index" on 2degrees, since their key finding is that with current levels of CO2 emissions this target will not be hit and we are likely to see global temperature rises of 6°C if current emissions levels continue.  To achieve the 2°C target would require cuts in carbon of 5.1% every year from now to 2050!  Keeping to the 2°C carbon budget will require unprecedented and sustained reductions over four decades. PwC's assessment is that Governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2°C appear highly unrealistic and that up to 6°C seems to be much more likely.

 

Global warming is forecast to exceed 2°C
 target and could reach up to 6°C

To reinforce the point UN research has also recently been published showing that the last decade has been the hottest since records began and that this increase in temperature is accompanied by weather patterns that are becoming more extreme and unpredictable.  Yet some politicians, particularly those on the right, seems to think that fracking is a good idea to address our fast approaching energy supply crisis and that yet more CO2 released into the environment will be alright: really?

 

So what should government be doing with this intelligence and how should policy be developed to respond to a threat of global significance?  Well I would suggest that there are a number of polices that should be adopted immediately to ensure that our economy is safeguarded from these risks and is optimised to address the threats and opportunities that this environmental crisis presents.

The first and most important step is to base all of our future energy policies on the fact that we have dramatically reduced demand through a comprehensive and thorough refurbishment campaign.  The UK should invest in “negawatts” before it spends even a single penny on new power generation capacity.

I am not saying that this is an easy or risk free strategy, but I believe that it is essential if we are to make the strategic adjustments that are required to rebalance our economy, dramatically cut our reliance on imported gas and nuclear power and create a maximum demand that can be met by renewable technologies with appropriate, intelligent power storage solutions.

To achieve the refurbishment and performance upgrade of our entire existing building stock will require a paradigm shift in the property and construction industries along with a concerted and collective effort not achieved since the war.  I would argue that it is far too important to be left to 5 year government terms or party politics and may even demand a new political consensus.

Training will be required to create an army of highly skilled building technicians able to undertake this work of national importance; creating a valuable and productive workforce from our currently underemployed youth.  The legacy of this period of national renewal will be a new model construction industry, populated by professional and highly skilled workers able to deliver new build and refurbishment projects to outstanding levels of performance.

But we should not stop there!  As part of the revolution we should democratise and decentralise power generation by embedding localised generation throughout the country, close or better still, within existing communities.  This will change occupant behaviour by making each householder or building operator a producer rather than simply a consumer and has the potential to deliver up to 30% energy savings simply by cutting out transmission losses that occur between remote power stations and the distant communities they supply.

This decentralised approach to power generation makes it possible to harness the waste heat that is created as part of the generation process and use it to directly heat buildings and provide hot water.  To facilitate Combined Heat and Power(CHP) or better still Combined Cooling Heat and Power (CCHP) systems will require new Community Infrastructure in the form of thermal mains that will transport heat between power plants and buildings.  Investment will also be required to increase thermal storage capacity to help smooth the jagged delivery of renewable solar thermal heating systems.

The UK has signed up to achieve an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 yet there is still no coherent policy linking supply with demand.  Time is fast running out to make the scale and magnitude of changes within our economy to meet our international commitments and even those who see nuclear power as the only answer realise that it is unlikely to be able to deliver sufficient capacity quickly enough to prevent the lights going out in the not too distant future.  Urgent reduction of demand must be commenced immediately and pursued with a combination of grant “carrots” and taxation “sticks” to encourage the market to do the right thing.

Regulatory constraints should be developed which ensure that all new development is carbon positive by 2020 and that capitol receipts from new carbon taxation are reinvested in the refurbishment and renewal of our existing building stock, 80% of which will still be in use by 2050.  We need to stop building the “Archicouture” of the past, with its obsession with style and shape making, but devoid of meaning, and instead develop a New Sustainable Architecture able to address the urgent issues of our age.

A Campaign for Real Architecture

I have long been of the opinion that we are on the threshold of a period of rapid and revolutionary change, which remains imminent, but also stubbornly illusive!  It is now over a hundred years since the birth of modernism, yet we continue to design most modern buildings in a style that has remained fundamentally unchanged over this period.



A thermally inefficient
 fully glazed office facade



The fully glazed façade remains the default answer for office and commercial buildings and is increasingly common in residential, hotels, schools and in fact anything that needs to be perceived by its target market as “premium” or “luxury”.  I have even had conversations with one very “blue chip” developer who insists that all their luxury housing is designed in a glass walled modern style.

It is almost as if the 1970’s energy crisis never happened; or that the climate change deniers have actually been proven to have been right all along!  We recently passed the significant threshold of 400 parts per million level for atmospheric CO² yet still nothing changes.  There is now a detailed body of knowledge regarding envelope performance along with the potential for passive heating, cooling lighting and ventilation, yet the tyranny of the initial dumb image persists.

To accompany this lack of any real and concerted action there seems to have been an exponential growth in the rhetoric supporting sustainable development, with professional, repeat clients all arguing that this is the future while continuing to procure buildings from the past.  Now, while I accept that buildings take a long while to come to fruition, there is no evidence that I can detect, of any real or concerted change.

So what will be that catalyst that will trigger the sustainable architecture revolution?  The first shoots may well be the proliferation of groups that promote alternative metrics to measure building projects and promote sustainable development.  BREEAM and LEED are the most obvious of these but there is now a long and growing list including:

Energy Savings Trust

Society for the Environment

Sponge

The Usable Building Trust

Carbon Buzz

Honest Buildings

Recently, the Feeling Good Foundation was established, within the Building Centre Trust,  to research and promote how the built environment can be designed specifically to enhance the wellbeing of occupants.  One of the Foundations key objectives is to establish what constitutes value and what metrics should be used to measure wellbeing in the built environment.  I believe that this area represents the missing link and that once we are able to accurately assess the additional value that sustainable buildings create through improved occupant performance then we will finally be able to make a robust business case which shows a return on the investment required to deliver sustainable buildings through improved occupant productivity.

There are three areas that I believe are key to achieving the paradigm shift that is required if we are to ensure sustainable development becomes the norm.

People

The design process for all projects must place the wants needs and desires of building users at the heart of the process.  This will be a particular challenge for speculative developments where specific user groups are not known and is likely to drive innovation and the development of new building arrangements with more flexible and diverse spaces and environments.

Procurement

One of the most intractable barriers to sustainable development is the manner in which we buy buildings.  It is essential that we move away from lowest cost tendering to procurement systems that incentivise improved performance.  While there have been some isolated instances where this has been tested, most notably in the Building Schools for the Future programme the construction supply chain must be engaged to deliver better performing buildings and should be rewarded when this is achieved.  This would significantly change the nature of the process, placing more emphasis on design and encourage ongoing relationships between the construction industry and occupiers post completion.

Performance

It is essential that we understand how our existing building stock is performing so that investment can be targeted appropriately.  I would advocate that we should demand that all buildings must display their energy performance on a read out adjacent to the front door and that this data should be used to identify the best performing 25% of each building type with a green light, the middle 50% with an amber light and the worst 25% with a red light.  Imagine a street of houses where the good the bad and the ugly are made public; I am convinced that this really would make significant change happen extremely quickly!

There are two other factors that are required to create the necessary confidence for individuals and institutions to invest.  The Government needs to sets a clear policy framework to encourage sustainable development and then must show perseverance and not keep tinkering with it.  Unfortunately I suspect that this may be the biggest barrier of them all!

Rebuilding Broken Britain

To create enduring value within our economy I believe that we need to radically change not only the nature of the buildings that we build, but also, the way that we procure them.  To achieve holistically sustainable buildings it is essential that the procurement process is intelligent and able to assess and reconcile the social, economic and environmental aspects of every project.  However, this is not currently the case, as is amply demonstrated by the current fashion for meaningless architectural “iconography” being built in the City of London.



These projects have all been procured by professional, repeat clients, who claim to take sustainability seriously.  So why are they all building painfully fashionable, contorted building forms that are expensive, spatially compromised, have thermally inefficient fully glazed facades with deep plans that are impossible to daylight?  They have no doubt been encouraged to take this path by senior planners in the City who make powerful recommendations as to which “starchitects” work they would like to see added next to the City’s architectural zoo.  I would argue that developers of these schemes have simply applied a green wrapper to their activities and continued with business as usual, rather than embedding sustainable development at the core of their activities.

To achieve the required paradigm shift, we need to select design team members for their demonstrable track record of innovation in the field of sustainable development.  Project specific briefs should be prepared and published that define what is to be built and what key performance indicators will be used to judge the success of completed projects.  These indicators must include annual occupant satisfaction surveys, operational energy expenditure along with maintenance expenditure, with outcomes made publically accessible: after all, most of these buildings ultimately become assets of our pension funds!

I believe that we need to arrest the decline in quality and fitness for purpose of development; where we can calculate the cost of everything but having little or no understanding of where construction creates value.  To be relevant we must sever the link between construction output and the creation of investment assets whose value bears little or no relation to the performance of the building.  The fact that we are still debating if a “green premium” or a “brown discount” exists is powerful evidence that we are unable to effective ascribe value to the products created by our industry.  In my opinion Quantity Surveyors are obsolete and should be retrained to become Value Managers, able to orchestrate and create enduring value for clients and the wider UK economy.  This would be a good first step in redefining the why that teams interact, smashing professional silos can be and remade to encourage the sustainable outcomes that are urgently required.

Intelligent procurement must incorporate local procurement, so that communities that experience development receive social and economic benefit from the process.  We must stop packaging up ever larger parcels of development and instead place more, smaller, lower value contracts with locally based small and medium sized companies (SME’s) to create more jobs and spread construction expenditure more equitably throughout the UK.  Local firms who will be forced to live with the products of their labours, whereas national or international builders are far less accountable to the communities who inherit the buildings that they deliver and where the value that is created by the process benefits remote shareholders rather than communities.

The idea of local procurement should I believe be taken further with the construction industry supporting locally manufactured building products and materials that also create jobs and value.  This philosophy needs to be incorporated at the brief stage, requiring design and delivery teams to embrace the notion of the final building being Made in Britain, with public reporting of the outcome.  This initiative could drive a fundamental socio-political shift, moving away from a reliance on services to create value, restoring the balance the in the UK economy by supporting manufacturing.

There is a strong belief that Design & Build is the best answer for most buildings and clients.  However, as the recession has continued to bite it is noticeable how the amount of “design” that is being undertaken by contractors has dramatically reduced.  It is essential that Project Managers undertake detailed analysis of tender returns, if clients are to get the buildings that they think that they are buying, rather than the best that the contractor can cobble together without the correct amount of timely, expert detailed design.

Large organisations are changing their terms and conditions, increasing the time that suppliers have to wait to be paid; contractor Carillion now expect suppliers to wait 120 days to receive payment.  This creates cash flow issues further down the supply chain and can result in small, well run companies going out of business.  Associated with this issue is the protracted nature of contractual negotiations, demands to agree to unfair and ultimately uninsurable terms and conditions, resulting in significant delay in the period from starting work to receipt of the first payment.  It is essential that the government takes urgent action to get the money moving and should start by insisting that all appointments are agreed prior to commencement and strict 30 days terms are mandatory.

We must increase investment in training and education to equip our workforce with the skill, knowledge and expertise required to add sustainable value, regardless of the individual’s role in the supply chain. Crucially, I believe that we need to invest in vocational training to radically improve skill levels within our sector and create a workforce who are able to deliver construction to the higher levels of performance required.  The industry must offer great career opportunities for all regardless of gender.

For the construction sector to once again become an engine for growth in the UK economy then investment must be focused not on iconic new build schemes but instead on the refurbishment of our existing building stock.  We urgently need to invest in improving the performance of our existing buildings now!  This will create jobs, establish the essential missing link between energy efficiency and energy supply, reduce our reliance on expensive imported energy and ultimately reduce the number and cost of the next generation of nuclear power stations that we will be forced to buy from aboard if we are to keep the lights on.

To rebuild broken Britain sustainably we need to radically change the things that we build, along with the ways that we procure them.  Professional boundaries need to be challenged and new bodies established.  I would argue that none of the existing professional bodies can provide the leadership needed and what we require is an Institution for Sustainable Development, open to all professions and their clients, which can effectively research, promote and lobby for change.

Localism should be reinterpreted to demand that the value created by development directly benefits the communities that host development, creating jobs and economic activity close to the site.  On a national scale we should develop a new vernacular architecture using materials and products that are Made in Britain, including the development of upcycled products that convert waste materials into new construction products and materials.  Fundamentally we need to understand, through compulsory Display Energy Certificates (DEC), how every building in the UK is performing and then use this intelligence to guide a national refurbishment mission to dramatically improve performance.

This piece was first published in Sustain Magazine May/June 2013

Phoenix HQ - Update No. 5

Another month has passed and once again it is time for the Phoenix HQ construction update.

 

 

The Site (26.04.2013)

 

The most significant change that has occurred on site since the last blog post is that the Barn building's structure and SIPs are now in place. The Barn will act as a extra community space or village hall type structure and already has its first booking for a party next January.

 

The Barn (09.04.2013)

 

Inside the main building the north lights in the roof are now installed and boarding removed. This has transformed the first floor from a dark and slightly dank environment to a spacious space awash with a very even north light. Making what seems to me to be ideal working conditions.

The north lit 1st floor (26.04.2013)

 

The majority of the work now taking place is now the installation of Mechanical and Electrical portions of the design. The electrical trunking and trays have almost all been installed and soon we will see the exposed galvanised conduits appearing on the walls. 

 

The view from the entrance (09.04.2013)

 

The other exciting thing that has has happened on the project is that on the 12th of March there was a topping out ceremony attended by representatives of both the community and the project team. 



  

The Team  (26.04.2013)





Black Thoughts on Ecobuild

Well that’s ecobuild over for another year, and I for one say good!  In many ways I think that ecobuild reflects many of the barriers that are preventing our industry delivering the step-change that is required to address the pressing issues of our age.  As I walked around the vast, artificially conditioned interior of ExCel London what struck me most powerfully was the gap between presentation and reality.

Every product has
been greenwashed!

In the evolution of sustainable design I believe that we have really not changed much at all; all that has changed is the words that we use to describe products and the spin that is used to emphasise their virtues.  Ecobuild is dominated by major global construction product manufacturers and suppliers all of whom have added words like “eco” or “green” to the descriptions of their products and then, in the vast majority of cases, simply continued with business as usual.

The high cost of exhibiting at the show prevents most small companies and start-ups from displaying their wares, so almost all of the really interesting things that one found in the early shows, back in the good old days at Earls Court, have now disappeared.  For me to continue to make the annual pilgrimage to the Royal Docks, this must change.  I think that as the UK’s largest construction trade show there is a responsibility incumbent upon UBM, the franchises new owners to give something back, and this should be in the form of small low or no cost stands for small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) and start-ups.

As a practice, we have an initiative called Product of the Month where we ask our team to identify innovative sustainable building products and materials.  On average we have noted that it takes at somewhere between 3 and 5 years for the products that we find to appear at ecobuild.  Clearly, this would be cut dramatically if they were able to exhibit at low or no cost.  Also, by gaining exposure sooner they are more likely to survive and thrive.



The international nature of the industry is reflected at ecobuild, with significant space given over to foreign firms, with a rapid growth in those coming from China.  Many contractors now boast about having their own global supply chain, able to source products direct from Chinese manufacturers, cutting out the middle men.  But is this really a sustainable model for the UK economy?

I passionately believe that we need to rebalance our economy by growing our manufacturing sector.  This is essential if we are to create the range of jobs that we need to achieve full employment and long term social cohesion.  Construction products and materials manufactured and sourced from the UK create jobs and ensure that value is created in the UK and not aboard.  Removing long distance supply chains also delivers easy cuts in embedded carbon, which is increasingly important as we cut operational energy.

Glabal trade,
large carbon footprint!

Local sourcing of construction labour will ensure that host communities benefit from the construction process, but I would like this principle extended.  Small and medium scale (SME) businesses create jobs locally and in greater numbers than large national or international firms.  I would like to see all state funded procurement favour local small businesses for all contracts below £5 million.  Locally designed and built projects will help reconnect the property industry with the communities that we should be serving, correcting the distortions that have occurred due to property being seen primarily as an investment asset class rather than a means of enhancing the efficiency and wellbeing of building occupiers.

There is a pressing need for radical change to make the construction industry relevant and capable of addressing the concerns of our age.  The future must be small, local and accountable if we are to deliver intrinsically sustainable development.

Phoenix HQ - Update No. 4

In the month and a half since the last blog work has continued on the Phoenix HQ despite the bad weather. When the last post was written the work that was happening on site included the installation of the SIPs, the blockwork and the installation of the zinc.

 Zinc Roof - 29.01.2013

This month the zinc has been moved from the walls to the roof so that, although no visible progress has been made for the casual passer by. The majority of the roof is now covered and work can progress on large areas of the first floor without fear of water damage.

Acoustic linings on roof - 28.02.2013

Where the zinc has been installed and the roof is water tight the team on site have been fixing a layer of rockwool to the internal face of the roof to create an acoustic barrier. A layer of either plasterboard or OSB is then fixed on top of this. Once these have been installed they will need to be painted before first fix begins.

 

Sample of electrical conduits - 11.02.2013

In preparation of first fix commencing we have started to see samples of what the M&E sub-contractors are proposing. With the exposed blockwork and minimal finishes these are of particular importance as they will be more visible than in an ordinary building.

Credit Union Screed - 11.02.2013

Now that the blockwork is complete on the ground floor the team have been progressing with the screed floor. So far the entirety of the screed in Phase 1 is complete and Phase 2 should have been finished in time for the next blog.

Breaking ground - 20.02.2013

As well as exciting things happening on the inside of the main building, work has continued around the rest of the site. The work required to reinforce the rear site wall has been completed and the foundations for the Barn and Substation are now in place. 

By the next update the Barn's frame and SIPs will have been installed and first fix will have commenced. The internal walls will also have been painted, which means we will be able to start getting an impression of what the internal spaces will feel like.

 The site - 28.02.2013