It can feel like walking into a cave, where, given the darkness, our imagination takes over to ready us for all the potential threats.
We achieved this with very little disruption.. Design to Value means rigorously assessing every part of a project using a wide variety of value criteria, which come from the client and from the sector more broadly.Our Platforms approach to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA) bakes value into the process by bringing the benefits of manufacturing to the design and construction process.
This combined approach can be applied to any building type, but we have seen huge benefits when the buildings we design are particularly complex, or house particularly complex systems and processes..The benefits of a Platform approach to design and construction: time, cost, quality.A Platforms approach to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA) delivers significant benefits to a project, including: reduced costs, reduced programme time, reduced carbon, reduced numbers of workers required to build, increased health and safety, increased quality, increased flexibility and adaptability.. And we can deliver all of this with no compromise on the aesthetic quality of the building.
The beauty of Circle Birmingham hospital – including the spectacular cantilever we achieved over the main entrance – bears witness to that last point.And this is not simply architectural posturing.
We know that the physical environment affects us directly, and it has been shown repeatedly that the patient experience of a beautiful and uplifting hospital environment makes a materially positive difference to clinical outcomes.. Clearly, all of these benefits are critical when healthcare is under such pressure – pressure which shows no signs of abating.
When public money is being spent at such scale, the opportunity to increase benefits across the piece while also making the money go further is surely one that we should seize.. A proven approach.For this reason, implementing a sustainable design strategy incorporates every aspect of the building process, from the earliest design stages through to construction and post-completion.
Evaluating an asset’s performance, and understanding how its entire environment operates, forms a key part of our work within Sustainability and Building Physics at Bryden Wood.We look at how a building gains heat in summer, or loses it in winter; how it requires natural or artificial light; as well as issues like temperature control, moisture and air movement.
Although some of the focus on this topic was lost in the last recession, the industry’s renewed commitment to sustainability in design is intensifying.This is in large part due to the climate emergency and our need to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.