She then brings together and manages multi-disciplinary, multi-national and multi-organisational teams to quickly identify and develop value-adding, innovative solutions.
However, upcycling of these elements is still a viable solution.. Our response is to:.- Engage early with contractors to plan deconstruction scenarios and reduce waste sent to landfill.. - Adopt circular economy strategies for deconstruction and reuse, including:.
o Upcycling materials to put back in the local supply chain.. o Adopting the principles of buildings as material banks, urban mining, and use of material passports.. o Using bolted connections and smaller structural grids, which facilitate disassembly, cutting (if needed) and deconstruction.. Use membranes to decouple the slab from the screed and explore alternatives, such as dry screeds, sand and gravel screeds, floor dense boards, particle boards or cardboard and sand layers.. Procurement of timber and distance.Currently, most timber used in the UK for construction is manufactured and imported from mainland Europe.Depending on the distance, this can have an impact on the total carbon emissions.. Our response is to:.
- Conduct detailed whole-life carbon analysis of buildings, including harvesting, processing, manufacturing, and transportation to end-of-life disposal.. - Prioritise locally produced engineered timber and strategically select timber that can be shipped instead of transported by road.. At Bryden Wood, we have explored local sourcing of engineered timber.The results show that distance is very important and the carbon emissions from northern France, Belgium and western Germany are relatively small.
In the case of Spain or Sweden, even though these materials can be shipped by boat (lower carbon emissions per nautical kilometre), the distances are so large that they amount to more than double the emissions from road only transportation.
However, they are still small compared to A1-A3.. Accounting for biogenic carbon capture when carrying out a whole life carbon assessment.At the other end of the scale, work for a case study was also undertaken on an example development of 50 flats, mapping it against the common themes that run through planning applications.
These included things such as names, addresses and locations, although specifics weren’t included as the work was still pre proof of concept..The Benefits of Digitising Planning.
Digitising planning is an emerging technology and way of working, and it’s hoped that learnings will be shared as things develop in different areas of the world.While we’ll never get rid of the subjective element of planning, and certainly not the need for people, digitising planning could help reduce administrative burden, freeing up time for planners to do the more valuable, judgement based planning work and enabling us to make better, and more holistic, sets of decisions.. Another benefit it’s hoped will arise from digitising the planning system is to make planning more accessible to members of the public.
(Editor: Automatic Mixers)