Category Archives: built environment

on tranisition towns – community based fm in action

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I read the recent Ecologist article on Transition Totnes with great interest and delved deeper into understanding the transition movement, an initiative that responds to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change.

Best described from the Transition Wiki as:

A Transition Initiative is a community that is unleashing its own latent collective genius to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and to discover and implement ways to address this BIG question:

“for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”

As the Ecologist article illustrates, and the initiative wiki demonstrates this movement could have a significant effect on the built assets and facilities within a community and how they are used, and ‘greened’ .

Yet more importantly Transition Towns can be seen as a great example of Community Based Facilities Management (CbFM) and community collaborative working  in action.

Incidentally the transition towns site lists some 25 towns or communities within the initiative to date – is yours there?

on BREEAM

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Mel over at Elemental posted an interesting and useful round up of BREEAM stuff. BREEAM and LEED (the US version) is certainly in the news at the moment, with both appearing to develop into specific sectors of construction. Rightly or wrongly BREAM and LEED will become central to achieving carbon neutrality and other sustainable targets in the coming years.

I am still not convinced of the benefits of these schemes over the life of a facility and contribution to the users business or organisational costs. (ie a focus on the 1, rather than the 5 or 200 from the 1:5:200 school of thinking)

My comments left in response to Mels article are copied below…would appreciate your thoughts…

…BREEAM and LEED tend to be taking off in all directions – much as the EFQM did 5 or so years ago – can this be a good thing or is it a watering down of a good original concept?

We are seeing more and more targets being set to achieve BREEAM Excellent for this or that sector, yet for the construction and fm sectors this means very little, so is ignored.

Even with the more eco aware construction organisations , their contribution to the whole process is sometimes seen as too limited, (patronising maybe?) ie around waste, transport etc, rather than making real contribution to the environmental life cycle of the facility, so again drops quickly to the bottom of the to do lists.

getting to zero

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One of the excellent articles on the new Building Sustainability site is The Year to Zero.  putting many of the important targets and objectives being set for our industry in a chronoligical count down to carbon zero, neutral or ‘sustainability’. (or wherever its is deemed we need to be)
The article, in conjunction with Fulcron Consultaing will be updated as and when more targets are set, so definelty one to watch.

I use a similar approach, looking into the ‘planned future’ for our sector, helping organisations set their own strategies and targets, on green and other related topics.  How do your business or improvement plans map onto this timeline?  Will you be ahead of the game, prepared, or lagging and playing catchup? Do you even have a route-map to get you there?

Integrated Project Delivery

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ExtranetEvolution posted an in-depth review and commentary on the recently published Integrated Project Delivery guide, from the AIA in the US. Thinking this would be all IT and Technology I have given the guide a quick scan, but a few things caught my eye for a more in-depth read. As a Constructing Excellence‘s Collaborative Working Champion , I liked the opening…

Envision a new world where …

... facilities managers, end users, contractors and suppliers are all involved at the start of the design process
… processes are outcome-driven and decisions are not made solely on a first cost basis
… all communications throughout the process are clear, concise, open, transparent, and trusting
… designers fully understand the ramifications of their decisions at the time the decisions are made
… risk and reward are value-based and appropriately balanced among all team members over the life of a project
… the industry delivers a higher quality and sustainable built environment

Note the order of the first bullet point – facilities managers first. This resonates back to the early work between Constructing Excellence (then BE) and the Centre for Facilities Management, with a clever title of abecfm , where the future was envisaged as facilities managers as the process broker for the whole process, from user requirements to design to construction to building in use. This related to expressions such as the industry formerly known as construction (Richard Saxon) and the the industry formerly known as fm (yours truly)

Is this then the world of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD)…. (It will be interesting to see if the rest of the paper delivers a route or road map this new world – watch this space – or Pauls blog at ExtranetEvolution )

lack of education on green finances a barrier to sustainability?

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How do we deal with education of green financial benefits in eduction?

The recent and excellent copy of GetSust Issue 31 from Melanie Thompson carries a feature on the recent CIOB study:

A UK survey says the construction industry is poised to fully embrace sustainability, while two recent international studies have found that construction clients and tenants are putting ‘green’ buildings at the top of their shopping lists. All that’s lacking, it seems, is a leap of faith. Could post-occupancy evaluation (POE) push the two sides together?

A study commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) suggests that the vast majority of construction professionals believe that ‘green’ building is the future for the construction industry.

Of the 850 construction professionals questioned, 94 per cent believe that ‘green’ building is the future for construction, and 86 per cent believe that there are financial benefits to producing energy efficient buildings.

And contrary to expectation, 67 per cent of respondents felt that the current UK building regulations do not go far enough to create energy efficient buildings.

Commenting on the survey results, Michael Brown CIOB deputy chief executive put the lack of up-take of the green message down to “…a shortage of client awareness and education towards the financial benefits for building green projects”.

For more on this and the Get Sust service, and win a T Shirt go to Get Sust Continue reading →

the Code …from denial to despair?

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The cost of achieving carbon neutral or zero homes to the Code keeps raising its head, as Phil over at Sustainability Blog points out.

I didnt catch the UCT speakers name on the US Greenbuild365 live webcast testerday, I was listening rather than watching, but a sound bite delivered with typical American style caught my ear…“The building sector is over-estimating the cost and under-estimating the impact of climate change issues”

How true, when we think about the moaning around the cost of the new Code for Sustainable Housing, which will be seen as a smokescreen for reluctance in doing anything at all.

Jonathan Porrit writing in his blog and in BD… makes the point well… why put a price on the importance of carbon free homes?

Government policy is being applied to decarbonising both new and existing housing, with Building Regulations and the Code driving that transformation. An industry that has lived for far too long in a feather-bed world, where nobody gave a tinker’s cuss about energy and resource efficiency, is being incentivised to change, and is marketing to rapidly rising consumer expectations. So why would anybody suppose that the combined genius of architects, designers, engineers, builders, surveyors and planners isn’t going to be able to come up with the zero-carbon goods?

I live in weird world these days. Having spent most of my life described as a prophet of doom, I now find myself having to shake people out of a fatalistic “can’t be done” mind-set! We seem to have moved from denial to despair in one effortless leap. So let’s get our creative act together here. After all, we don’t have a choice about this. Either we rise to this challenge, or the mealy-mouthed, risk-averse mediocrity that dominates this particular industry will take us all down with it.

The costs arising from inefficiencies through waste, poor project management, incorrect procurement, lack of working together, poor design, legal fees to check contract documentation and all the well documented historical ills of our sector etc far far outweighs the cost of achieving the Code… surely?

Acheiving the code needs a different mindset, as Einstein said… we cannot solve todays issues with the same mind set that created them in the first place...

By rearranging the debate towards opportunity we can can move from despair to exciting.

Clinton @ Greenbuild365

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I caught the live broadcast (webcast) of Bill Clintons speech at Greenbuild365* yesterday, and a few things stuck in my mind.

One was Clintons reference to this being an opportunity, a challenge but an opportunity, and that the transition from a  carbon economy to a green economy will produce as many new jobs, skills and professions as the carbon industries loose.

he saw that the greenbuild sector was the place to be to really address climate change issues. “The sale has been made,” he said. “Otherwise Al Gore wouldn’t have got the Nobel Prize.  Now what we have to do is to prove that this is not a bottle of castor oil that we’re being asked to drink”.

Secondly,  Clintons call the need for an industry benchmark to keep score, and his pledge, I assume from his foundation, to create a tool for the AEC Industries – (Architecture, Engineering and Construction).

Watch this space…

In fact Clinton could be one to watch.  The worldchanging writer and founder Alex Steffen ran a story on Clinton’s speech  to US Mayors in Seattle recently and described it as …quite simply, the best speech on climate given by an American politician (other than Al Gore) I’ve ever heard — it’s the sort of speech I wish a sitting president would stand up and deliver before Congress and the nation

* As to Greenbuild, I understand7000 saw Clintons speech, 20,000 will attend over three days and most of the key speeches are webcast around the world. (An idea for the UK  Think 2008 maybe Phil?)  I just get a feeling something big is happening there, despite the rhetoric in American politics and leadership.

MIT, Gehry and more questions

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Blogs and the Media are awash with news and comments of MIT sueing Gehry for an ‘unbuildable design’ at the MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, Boston. (The Guardian, Building etc)
I find this fascinating and a reminder of the failures and flaws in the more traditional (or historical – traditional sounds too craft, and heritage-like), un-collaborative,  approach to construction.  The best reporting is in the Boston Globe,  which provides the contractors (Skanksa) view as well.  (Boston being an old home of mine, I try to keep informed through the Globe)  And its very illuminating.

“This is not a construction issue, never has been,” said Paul Hewins, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA. He said Gehry rejected Skanska’s formal request to create a design that included soft joints and a drainage system in the amphitheater, and “we were told to proceed with the original design.”

After the amphitheater began cracking and flooding, Skanska spent “a few hundred thousand dollars” trying to resolve the problems, but, he said, “it was difficult to make the original design work.”

It also delves deeper, citing  former Boston University president John Silber, who said “It really is a disaster,” and sharply criticizes the Stata Center’s design in a new book, “Architecture of the Absurd: How ‘Genius’ Disfigured a Practical Art.”  A book that questions why the Guggenheim is always covered in scaffolding? Why the random slashes on the exterior of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, supposed to represent Berlin locations where pre-war Jews flourished, reappear, for no apparent reason, on his Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto? Or why Frank Gehry’s Strata Center, designed for MIT’s top-secret Cryptography Unit, has transparent glass walls? Not to mention why, for $442 per square foot, it doesn’t keep out the rain?

Ouch.

He goes on … and asks all the questions that critics dare not. He challenges architects to derive creative satisfaction from meeting their clients’ practical needs. He appeals to the reasonable public to stop supporting overpriced architecture. And most of all, he calls for responsible clients to tell the emperors of our skylines that their pretensions cannot hide the naked absurdity of their designs

Time to order a copy !

Carbon Offsetting not possible in the UK – is this correct?

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Noticed this on the SD Commissions website today –

… However, it is not currently possible to do carbon offsetting in the UK, as this would lead to the double-counting of any reduction in emissions (as all reductions are already claimed by Government in helping to meet our international obligations)…

Is this correct?  This needs to be read in the context of the SD Commission’s view on Carbon Offsetting and Neutrality, but having read the web page a few times I assume this means that the offset projects cannot be UK based?

So planting trees in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK, to absorb/sequester carbon dioxide, or any of the other main greenhouse gases is not available to construction projects looking to offset.  Well there go a few I know off…

Anyone care to clarify or offer an explanation of this?

Mixed Media Messages

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A mixed bag in the media over the weekend and today…

The Sunday Times launched a four week series on what promises answers to the global warming problems, which seems to be to

wait for Rogers to complete cities of the future,
capture carbons from the air,
geo-engineer solutions in the oceans,
sprinkling iron ocean surfaces , oh,
and build homes of the future that resemble Lost In Space visions of the future 1970’s style

    Meanwhile the Observer investigated 5 carbon calculators – and revealed that a personal footprint can vary from 2.3 tonnes to 28 tonnes – no surprises there!

    And then today in the Guardian – a Guardian survey shows only 48 of the top 100 companies trading on the UK stock exchange have published a plan to address and reduce their carbon emissions and a significant minority refuse even to reveal their carbon footprint. This report contains and interesting comment form Tesco’s Leahy -who predicts that by working with consumers, “we can turn the green movement into a mass movement”.

    Are we about to see a Tescos branded green movement?