GB Awarded £4.6 Million Care Home Project
GB Building Solutions has
started the year on a positive note after being awarded a £4.6 million care home project in Bramley, Basingstoke. The new build care home by national care provider Barchester Healthcare will accommodate 70 people. GB has worked closely with
Barchester in the past, completing the design and construction of a 54 bed dementia unit, Oaklands at Hilton Park care home in Cambridge, and a ten bed brain injury unit, Eden View at Hilton Park in Cambridge, over the past year. The latest project in Bramley will further strengthen the relationship between the builder and the care service provider. GB has become a specialist in building care homes, having successfully undertaken 13 care projects in just the last four years, including the recently completed £65 million PFI development of five ExtraCare villages across Cheshire, comprising the largest timber
development in Europe. Martin Smout, chairman and
chief executive of GB Building said, “This ongoing relationship between GB and Barchester Healthcare means that we can continually exceed our previous standards by acting on our learnings, creating new solutions and continually raising our standards, to provide the best possible care homes both for Barchester Healthcare and for the home’s future residents.” Kenneth MacKenzie,
Development Director at Barchester Healthcare, commented, “There is a real demand for high quality care in the Bramley area and we are looking forward to continue our excellent working relationship with GB on this project.” The project will start on site in
the next couple of weeks, and is expected to be completed in November 2010.
Supermarkets in Portugal Follow UK’s Lead
Natural lighting and ventilation specialist Monodraught is enjoying export success in Portugal as a number of supermarket chains follow the UK’s example by fitting Sunpipes to reduce energy costs and their carbon footprint. Even in winter most of Portugal enjoys five to six hours of sunshine each day, so it is no surprise that Sunpipes are proving so popular. By taking advantage of natural daylight, leading retailers Decathlon, Hipermercados E Leclerc and Intermarche are benefitting from cost and environmental savings; while the thousands of customers that shop with them every week enjoy what Sainsbury’s Commercial Director Neil Sachdev described as ‘amazing natural light’. The three supermarket chains
have installed a total of 575 Sunpipes. The 530mm Diamond Dome models are similar to those installed by the leading UK retailers, including Asda,
The Move to Low-Carbon Design
BRE Trust, the owner of BRE,
the centre of expertise on the built environment, is pleased to announce a new publication examining building users’ behaviours and subsequent potential impact on energy efficiency. The publication outlines the findings of a project that developed as a consequence of BRE researchers’ visits to schools, offices and other new buildings. The guide looks at eight case studies, assessing occupant behaviours and their subsequent potential impact on energy efficiency to provide recommendations for designers, facilities managers and building users of how these behaviours can be avoided and their impact reduced. New regulations and a drive to
reduce energy bills and CO2 emissions have meant that new buildings are being designed to be as energy efficient as possible and many use advanced, innovative
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technical systems to heat, cool and light the building. However, it has been frequently found that these new buildings are not meeting their proposed energy targets. It is thought that one of the main reasons for this is that the end users of the building do not understand the systems installed and do not know how to use the technologies. In fact, research has shown that building users frequently behave in ways that actually increase energy use above that expected, and so occupant behaviour is a key determinant of energy consumption. Some designers have turned to
fully automated systems with a view that it is possible to provide an ‘ideal’ environment. However, Many building studies have shown that fully automated building services often do not provide a high-quality, energy-efficient environment.
Councils Quizzed on Management of Green Spaces
Just as many of us have started
the New Year with the resolve to look after our health, CABE, the government’s advisor on urban design, is calling on urban local authorities to assess the health of their green infrastructure. Launched today as part of CABE’s Grey to Green campaign, the GI health-check is an online tool for urban councils in England to find out how well they are prioritising their green spaces. Green Infrastructure underpins the function and character of urban communities, but many local authorities do not realise how heavily their resources and skills are prioritised towards grey projects. The ten GI health-check questions ask councils to assess
the priority given to green spaces and the staff and resources to manage them. Local authorities will receive feedback that rates their performance, helping them identify where they need to make improvements, as well as inviting them to participate in CABE’s GI pilots, to be launched later this year. Sarah Gaventa, Director of CABE Space, said, “The GI health-check is an easy way for local authorities to identify how seriously they take their green spaces. The CABE website has useful tips to help councils make the shift from grey to green if their health-check score reveals they need support.”
Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and Tesco. Decathlon, for example, has installed 209 Sunpipes at its store in Cascais, 120 in Santarem, 115 in Castelo Branco and 98 in Torres Vedras. And Intermache has installed eight in its Central Warehouse in Alcanena. While UK supermarkets have
shown that Sunpipes can be up to 50 % more energy efficient and emit up to 50 % less CO2 compared to stores built just a few years ago, Portuguese supermarkets can expect to save even more by eliminating the unnecessary use of electric lighting during their longer daylight hours. They will also be hoping to take advantage of the significantly improved retail sales that natural lighting is said to generate, according to university reports.
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