Sustainability Future design
Counting carbon with its emphasis on minimising cost and waste,
Similarly, the early low- and zero-carbon neighbourhood would play a major role in the building industry.
projects employing many consultants, struggled to Preconstructed solutions for high-rise towers are
keep count on the carbon emissions. Consequently the now the norm: a structural armature is the only
role of carbon accountant emerged and is now provided component to be conventionally constructed,
as part of project management services through a BIM with all accommodation/service modules
environment. preconstructed.
These developments started to change the definition However, 10 years ago, none of us
of the building services engineering profession and thought preconstruction would grow so
this caused CIBSE to re-evaluate itself. In 2014 it quickly or offer such design choice.
became CIBT – the Chartered Institute of Building It has become plain that a preconstruction
Technologists. approach has enormous advantages for
In 2020, looking back a decade ago, it is plain to carbon-critical buildings, with their high levels of
see that we were not all going to wake up one morning integration; and, since the additional cost of zero carbon
and be able to design and construct carbon-critical has been offset by the cost benefits of preconstruction
buildings. It has been a stepping-stone experience – and the solutions are performance warranted, success
we have gone from one project to the next, improving was inevitable.
as we go. Those that started first have been the main With the dominance of bundled technology solutions
beneficiaries. and preconstruction, the role of the building services
We are now delivering zero-carbon buildings as a design consultant for the majority of new building
matter of course, but this would not have been possible projects has migrated to a focus on concept design
without an amazing input from the manufacturing and performance specification. However, given that
and pre-construction industries. Manufacturers in in the UK, for instance, 65 per cent of buildings in
the emerging mass markets of heat pumps, integrated 2050 will have been built before 2000, a whole energy
renewables, low-energy technologies, and so on, efficiency and intelligent refurbishment boom has
engaged with the design industry in the early days and been stimulated over the past decade and now forms
now produce bundled solutions that can be dropped the base load for most building services consultants.
into a building design solution seamlessly. In 2010, Richard Smith was network chair of carbon
With hindsight, it’s now clear that preconstruction, critical buildings at Atkins. l
www.cibsejournal.com January 2010 CIBSE Journal 31
CIBSEjan10 pp28-31_2020.indd 31 17/12/09 16:03:13
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