Moving to a value-based process requires us to be braver.
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.
Biogenic carbon capture is the process whereby trees absorb and store carbon dioxide during growth.
Once cut down, part of this carbon (from leaves, roots, and small branches) is released and the remaining is stored in the trunk, which is used for timber.. New trees are planted in its place to ensure a constant process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.However, with one provider interested in road safety and surface water, and the other in railways and embankment flooding, they quickly discovered that their differing concerns added significant complication to the task.
A complex process of questioning ensued around the use and translation of nomenclature, which Sharp says was a useful process in itself.However, the fact remained that every time they opened a new conversation, a new dimension and further complexity was revealed.. Sharp says this is why the ideas behind the National Digital Twin are necessary, because although we have lots of very specialised and efficient systems for sharing information, in order to achieve the next level of efficiency and public benefit, we need to start sharing information between systems.
While we’re very optimised to keep water off the roads, we don’t really understand other aspects, such as whether a drainage ditch should be built to go left or right at a particular junction.The information exists, we just need to find different ways of interpreting between it.. Sharp says that digitising planning is very much a use case of the National Digital Twin programme because people can see the value in it and therefore have the appetite to address it.