Carbon neutral buildings designed

Searching for the carbon negative led me to this neat little 5 mins video from Green Building Studio It sets about designing a building to be carbon neutral using their online web service. It is worth following through to the end of the video to see how orientation and material choice affects the carbon [...]

End of back to backs

Pleased to note the greenhouse project in Beeston Leeds as reported in Building today. (Work starts on UK’s first carbon negative project) Having had an office on the fringe of Beeston for about 10 years, it was an area that fascinated me, a built environment from another era, with most of the housing of 19th [...]

New housing to fund energy improvements to old stock through 106?

Interesting post on today’s Building website - exploring the use of Section 106 on new developments to improve existing housing stock in the area

Fringe climate events at conservative conference, Blackpool

There is an impressive series of fringe events being organised by Climate Clinic along side the conference next week in Blackpool. Of note is the Ask an Architect event on Monday and Tuesday, hosted by the RIBA, billed as
Get advice from some of Britain’s best green architects on creating new, environmentally friendly [...]

Carbon Accounting for the Construction Industry

Noticed this (free) Envirowise event in Loughborough on 30th Oct.   Delighted to see David Hampton (Carbon Coach) is one of the speakers. I plan to attend and report back through here, and hopefully track down that elusive Construction Carbon Calculator.
For Lancashire Best Practice Club members - this is the type of event we need to [...]

How much coal is required…

…. to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?
Came across the useful - and frightening - link on How Stuff Works.  Take a look - the answer is a lot and a lot of carbon emissions as a by product.
Timely as news from the government to phase out traditional light [...]

Want to stop global warming? - New York Times

I have mentioned the Architecture 2030 programme here before. (An American programme to reduce carbon levels in construction and use of ALL buildings by 2030, 5 years ahead of the predicted point of irreversible damage when carbon emissions are predicted to hit 450ppm - they are currently at 380 something.)
Architecture 2030 is very [...]

Construction Knowledge Exchange

I am delighted that isite, fairsnape and CKE are now working together to bring news of CKE’s events and projects (focusing on the North West activities) through this blog.  We also welcome Andrea Pye, CKE, as a guest blogger and contributor.   Welcome to the blogosphere!
The newly created CKE page to this blog will carry more [...]

Project Management - yesterday today and tomorrow

Last night I presented to the NW CIOB Students meeting at UCLAN on the topic of project management, modern methods - subtitled OM yesterday today and tomorrow.  The slides in pdf format are available over on the events page.

Asbestos in system buildings

Noted on the HSE website…
This Sector Information Minute provides inspectors with background information on the issue of potential asbestos fibre release in CLASP and other ‘system’ buildings built between 1945 and 1980.
This document is published under the Freedom of Information Act.
Read SIM 7/2007/04 [PDF 560KB]