Mark Bryden (he/him)

asBuilt’s platform Vault presents a good example of how powerful things become when we can actually visualise what’s happening.. IoT can also be helpful for construction site managers, enabling them to easily track and keep record of information which might ultimately save them time or produce other benefits.

The adoption of Passivhaus does not prevent the incorporation of additional strategies to reduce embodied carbon and all designs retain the potential to achieve low embodied carbon performance if it is part of the design intent.. Further potential benefits from Passivhaus arise from the compact shape and the use of timber, although full life cycle analysis is required to quantify this.The compact shape is predicted to reduce the absolute quantity of materials whilst timber is a material with low embodied carbon which can be ultra-low depending on its end-of-life treatment..

Timber shows its maximum potential if it can be continuously reused at the end of a buildings’ lifecycle.If it is burnt or sent to landfill it will release CO2 and methane to the atmosphere, losing its properties as a heat sink.In order to enable timber to be continuously reused, the building should be designed for deconstruction.

Most Passivhaus buildings have not been designed for deconstruction in part due the complexity of junctions and the need to achieve the required overlapping and airtightness.This is however possible with the implementation of DfMA which can design assemblies that meet the stringent envelope performance requirements and can also be disassembled..

Passivhaus is a sustainable building certification standard that reduces operational energy and carbon emissions with minimum performance gap and achieves high levels of thermal comfort and air quality.. Bryden Wood’s P-DfMA approach to building design offers multiple synergies with Passivhaus since it is able to reduce construction programme, cost and design/construction complexity, and labour skills which are some of the inherent challenges of adopting Passivhaus.. Whilst the Passivhaus approach is focused on operational energy/carbon, there has been a keen interest in the industry to understand if this standard favours or penalises embodied carbon.

Bryden Wood’s analysis shows that the impact of the adoption of a Passivhaus system has a minimum impact in terms of embodied carbon.. To learn more about our Design to Value approach to design and construction, sign up for our monthly newsletter here:.Our global population is increasing rapidly – it’s estimated to reach 11.5 billion by 2050.

So there’s an unavoidable need to create high-quality and sustainable infrastructure for vast numbers of people, including housing, education, healthcare and transport.At the same time, our environment demands change, with the building and construction industry contributing a staggering 39% of global carbon emissions.

We must alter the way we design and build dramatically, both to keep pace with the needs of society and to prevent the acceleration of global warming.. At Bryden Wood, we are showing how this can be achieved through a process of industry collaboration and the adoption of modern methods of construction (MMC).By MMC, we mean all forms of innovation in construction - physical forms like P-DfMA, as well as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), robotics, data, automation, point cloud surveys, and so on… This is all in addition to the frequently used term ‘offsite’ which, in fact, only represents one aspect of MMC, or industrialized construction.