Design to Value: Shaping a Better Built Environment | Martin Wood

Another benefit we see from DfMA construction is the evolution of a more direct relationship between the customer and their supply chain partners, cutting down on transactional costs and eliminating a lot of inefficiency.

Intumescent paint has to be manually chipped off steelwork before it can be recycled or reused, so choosing to use boarding for fire protection is a better sustainable design choice.These decisions have little cost impact when they are integrated into the building’s design, but can help create – and sustain – the circular economy..

Extending a building’s life, or giving it a second life through refurbishment, reduces the need to use yet more building materials for its replacement.Designing adaptable buildings enables the function to change depending on its users’ needs.If COVID has taught us anything, it’s that workplaces and homes both need to be flexible to account for changing work patterns.

It’s a balancing act to make sure a building can be adaptable without over-designing the structure, architecture and MEP.But when we build smarter we can do this.

Repeatable building modules which can be switched in and out depending on requirements, such as glazing vs solid cladding modules, or heating vs heating and cooling fan coil unit modules, are simple features which may prevent a building from being torn down mid-way through its life expectancy.

Through a small number of new parts, the building has a whole new lifespan, limiting its embodied carbon when compared with the alternative of a new build.. Building less volume reduces costs, embodied carbon and operational carbon.The way we are focusing on achieving this is through carbon capture, which reduces emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) during synthesis by capturing emitted carbon dioxide and reusing it in other stages of the plastics manufacturing process..

Carbon Capture and Utilisation vs Carbon Capture and Storage.There are two main methods of carbon capture: carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The difference between them is that CCS takes the CO. 2. ,.and stores it to be sold on to whoever needs it later, whereas CCU reuses the collected CO. 2. almost immediately.