Author Archives: martin brown

Bristol city region to become showcase for sustainability

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I noticed the headline above in the local evening paper while in Bristol over the weekend and followed up links from Forum for the Future:

With nine in ten people in the UK now living in cities, the majority are already struggling with issues including congestion, pollution, limited housing, energy production and consumption and waste.

The Sustainable Bristol City Region Programme is a 10-year plan to bring together leaders from the public, private and NGO sectors in the Bristol City Region to develop and implement solutions to these problems.

The programme was launched on Friday by Jonathan Porritt, describing the project as “a unique opportunity to turn theory into practice in establishing the kind of sustainable urban living on which our future depends”.

He went on to say: Continue reading →

Hanham Hall … eco-village

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At the weekend I visited the Hanham Hall exhibition, set up to inform local residents of the development. A nice chat with the project lead gave a nice feeling that this is an exciting project, yet I still have a feeling that this is not quite the direction to go…

Focus seems to be on the Code Level 6 – zero carbon homes, rather than on the wider sustainable communities. Where will people shop, where will they send their children to school and how will they get to work, were questions raised by friends.

Although it was accepted this particular design may not be the one we use in 2016 to acheive level 6, and there will be a degree of learning on the project for future projects, the designs are based on the Chorley homes technology – so I hope the comments made by CarbonLimited are taken into account.

I was surprised to hear that carbon footprints are not an issue, with no focus on reducing carbons in the construction or production of the development. So does this mean business as usual for the house builder – other than integrating a different kit of eco -materials and technologies? If so – is this a greenwash sin?

My biggest moan to the Hanham Hall team though – and a pet hate of the internet is … advertised websites that are Continue reading →

oh no Darling …

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In December 2007 Alistair Darling was quoted as saying:

“Sustainability will be at the heart of the next Budget.
This is not an optional extra. It is essential for all our futures”

So was it? – well hardly, pale green, maybe, at its best – but with the focus on plastic bags – just another greenwash exercise. (I have copied the Friends of the Earth budget comment on green homes below to illustrate)

The Governments Stern Report indicates we should be spending 13billion on environmental issues right now, to avoid higher costs in the future. Environmental commentators estimate our spend to currently be 1billion

This further illustrates the priority sustainability has within this government, which may be a good thing to be aware of, as it may, hopefully, generate more communalist approaches to sustainability, that is a grass roots, do it because its the right thing to do approach. We have seen this in the US – in spite of Bush’s negative stance – the GreenBuild industry has flourished – because it makes sense.

So, time to get on and do it, we cannot afford to wait to be led by government. As Ghandi said – “be the change you want to see in the world”

Not surprising then, as Mark Lynas commented in the Guardian earlier this week (Britain is stealing the US crown of No 1 climate villian)- we are seeing protests trying to enforce government policy against the wishes of the government. A truly shaming moment for the Brown government

Continue reading →

EcoCity 2008

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A wealth of information relating to urban and city futures is to be found through the EcoCity2008 conference web site and media blogs, including interviews and podcasts through the Tomorrow Matters internet radio.

With a strap line of Get Ready to change the world… Ecocity World Summit 2008 will bring together the key innovators, decision makers, technologists, businesses and organizations shaping the conversation around ecological and sustainable city, town and village design, planning and development. We intend to put these issues on the economic and environmental agenda for 2008 and beyond.

Hoping to follow EcoCity2008 streams and on line content through this blog.

Just how the UK Eco Towns and Eco Villages (and even Transition Town) concepts compare to international approaches will be of interest.

ISO 9001:2008 – dramatic proposed changes

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Or Not.

It has been some 5 years since I was actively involved in ISO 9000 implementation, training and audits, but I was still underwhelmed to see the proposed changes to the new ISO9001:2008 standard as posted by Shaun over at Capable People . The world has moved on since 2000 – when the last real changes were made, it would appear the standard has not.

Even the world of quality has moved on from quality of product, quality of service, through excellence to arrive at ‘experience’

Being close to development of other standards though, I can understand the watered down consensus one size fits all committee discussions – and the outcome – but is this the way to bring the most used and influential quality standard up to date? As Shaun says John Seddon will have a field day !

I recall putting ISO 9000 on trial in a court room setting, the standard being accused of not delivering quality, parties put forward their cases for and against, John was the prosecutor, BSi the defence, both calling ‘witnesses’ to the stand.

The verdict? – you can guess, but I will fish out the summary from the Judge and post here.

See also how ISO 9001 is forming the base of a number of standards such as BS6001 – Responsible Sourcing Management – is it up to the job these days?

Get Sus

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Its always a pleasure to read the Get Sus e-newsletter from Melanie Thompson, and so more than happy to promote here.

This edition is a thoughtful piece : EcoBuild – Construction with a hint of green?

I do like that expression!

Melanie makes the point that the industry should not moan about the number of consultants now in the sustainability game – after all we, they, have worked hard to bring sustainability main stream, so looking to recover invested time and energy.

virtual world collaboration

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As I have been developing an exciting project in Second Life recently, collaborating in-world (as they say) with people across the US, in the UK, Switzerland and elsewhere – but more on that later – the emerging virtual world collaboration concepts have been rattling around my brain, emails and blogs that I read.

Whilst I bemoaned the fact that Eco-Build event had no real virtual presence, it was good to note Phils push for the virtual Sustainability Now event (now moved to 1 and 2 July).

I haven’t given enough time to the Think on line  forum – it didn’t really take off for me, but I sense that may be addressed through the Think08 event (where hopefully there will be more, and parallel online content)

In what must be a classic oxymoron – the Virtual Worlds conference in New York in April would appear not to be availble online!

An email from Howard Lictman at TelepresenceOptions intrigued me with the expression ‘keeping people off planes and improving collaboration” I guess here in the UK that would translate to ‘keeping people off the roads and improving collaboration” which is always a good thing.  (Telepresence is a conferencing technology where participants feel as if they are in the same physical space.)

Howards fascinating paper: ‘Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light’ can be downloaded here

Facebook is too bloated now for effective collaboration – other than shallow social fun.

Finally there is a debate within  LinkedIn  discussing where the best Live Community collaborations are to be found – Second Life, Facebook, or elsewhere.  Maybe the answer to that is within the blogging community?

BREEAM LEED – wrong tools for the wrong job?

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Hardly a day passes with out some news, comment or blog-post passes across my computer that is related to BREEAM, LEED, POE’s, or even EPC (that’s environmental property code from IPD). Mel at Elemental has posted some interesting observations on a forthcoming BREEAM review, which in conjunction with the UKGBC is aimed to shore up the British scheme in face of the growing influence of LEED, I assume.

Yet each item I read reinforces my feeling these are the wrong tools for the wrong job*. Maybe we are looking down the telescope the wrong way. Are we too pre-occupied with moulding our designs to the needs of the organisation or business and its people, rather than really listening to the organisation or business, its people and the society or community in which it lives (or will live)?

If we were to throw away these schemes, and start Continue reading →

newspaper house

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Treehugger ( number 13 in the top 50 most powerful blogs according to the Observer on Sunday) carries the news of the London house built from discarded free newspapers that was revealed over the weekend – it took just 5 days to get the 150,000 papers!.  Read more here

Treehugger, which must be on everyones RSS feed, has a staggering 1.8million unique hits per month,  has 40 writers in 10 countries and was bought last year  by Discovery Channel for reportedly $10m.  It has pages dedicated to design and architecture that covers the eco and green aspects of the built environment.

using isite as a bid tool

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I received interesting feedback from two individuals last week who mentioned they use isite as a knowledge base when answering bid questions for new work, to ensure they are up to date with current thinking. One of these was local, ie in the North West UK, the other in the USA.
I now regularly use the blog as a bookmarked, knowledge base, to easily recall items to develop work with clients, but I am really pleased to hear that others find value in the site as an archive source of information and knowledge.

Its another powerful plus for blogs.