BUILD 2016 Award Best Green Building Information Platform

BUILD 2016 Sustainable Building Awards
Best Green Building Information Platform UK
Green Building Encyclopaedia

BUILD 2016 Sustainable Building Awards
Best Green Building Information Platform UK
Green Building Encyclopaedia
About:

GBE submitted a Supporting Evidence Questionnaire in June 2016
Awards announced 21st October 2016

National Green Specification Ltd.
Best Green Building Information Platform – UK

Request for Supporting Evidence

Deadline: Friday June 17th

The firm:

Company Name: National Green Specification Ltd.
Practice area(s): East of England (Base), UK-wide (Activity), NW Europe (CAPEM > EEIG), Global (GBE Website)
Company Specialism: Green Building, Green Building Encyclopaedia, Green Specification, CPD, University Modules and Lectures

You:

Your name: Brian Murphy
Your position: Director, Environmental Specification Consultant, Author and Editor of GBE website

Please provide us with a brief overview of your firm
e.g. what kind of services do you offer?

We help manufacturers to understand and communicate their product’s environmental credentials.
We create Product, Accessory, System, Detail, Workmanship and Waste Specification clause templates.
We collate and organise BInformationM for BIM, PDT, COBie, Specification, avoiding the expense of BIM models.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WITH PROJECTS:
(feel free to submit as many as you’d like)

*Please note projects completed within the last 12 months are more likely to be successful.

Project name:
CAPEM Compass: CAPEM Cycle Assessment Procedure for Eco-impact of Materials;
Compass: Building Product Comparison System
Project type (Commercial, Retail etc.): Web based database and LCA software www.capemcompass.eu www.capem.eu
Date of completion: 2009-2013
Concept: Find shortlisted products according to appropriate and competent application, performance: local or project criteria; then compare their LCA and with generic materials LCA to choose, add site’s country and postcode to add delivery impacts; Generate site-specific products data sheets with LCA.
Reason for submission: As an example of the tools that could be generated. In the world of LCA comparison is not encouraged, CAPEM Compass enabled it, giving back the power to choose to designers.

What sets your firm apart from the crowd?

Focusing on helping manufacturers to extract and deliver essential information about their products in the best format for use by specifiers and BIM modellers, to create specification templates and datasets to interrogate.

What is your design philosophy?

Whilst the fiduciary ruled industry is focused on Profits before Planet before People, and many claim not to understand ‘Sustainability’ we adopt HERACEY™ Healthy Environmental Resourceful Appropriate Competent Effective Yardstick as the headlines to 400 criteria for choosing materials, products, systems, methods of construction and designing to bring them together in better buildings.

Do you think working with sustainable materials is better for business, and why?

Using HERACEY™ criteria enables our self-serving industry to deliver better buildings to serve society in a sustainable way.
Climate change drives reactive-legislation and campaigns like REACH, WEEE, ½W2L, Responsible Sourcing, Fabric-First, Build-Tight Ventilate-Right, Build-Light Insulate-Right Solar-Tight, trying to patch-up our failure to engage in responsible manufacturing, proper materials, competent buildings with good indoor air quality, resistant to 60 years of climate change, sooner.
Getting ahead of the game and investing in better buildings will accommodate a healthy, effective and profitable workforce; anything less could be an expensive business mistake.

If you were to identify an award winning area of your firm, what would it be?

Green Building Encyclopaedia’s ambition to create 30,000 joined up pages and tools to help educate students and re-educate our industry and professionals to enable better buildings and the adoption of environmental construction methods to become mainstream with the know-how to avoid professional and real or imaginary PI Insurance barriers.

SUGGESTED AWARD TITLE (WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU DESERVE?):

Greatest potential to make a difference
Most Promising Website
Most joined up thinking

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

In the world of BIM, GBE are beginning to collect equations and datasets, to create calculators or design and decision tools to enable APPs to interrogate BIM Elemental Assemblies or Bills of Materials (BIM BoM) and get really useful information to give control back to designers.
In the World of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), CAP’EM and GBE have refined a screening system to help choose appropriate products with all the right properties for their competent application and the ability to compare product’s and material’s LCAs.
In the World of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), CAP’EM and GBE argue its better to scrutinise and screen all materials and products, avoiding nasty ingredients in them all. This avoids the need to interact with unfathomable Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)’s EN 15804 output tables in LCA or EPD. Interrogation in BIM models at whole building level, will allow nasty ingredients to be diluted by aggregating, to appear ‘harmless’ and enable Business as Usual (BAU).
In the world of Evidence Based Design GBE also cling on to basic Rules of Thumb for sensible design avoiding expensive specialist consultants that make some projects impossible and don’t always get the best results.
Value Engineering as practised in the Construction Industry, is cost cutting individual components or deleting expensive items, instead of looking at the bigger picture and finding whole life value. GBE are looking at how to Value Engineer multi-functional systems into projects not out of them.
In the world of new unfamiliar environmental jargon using alphabetic encyclopaedias or drop down menus won’t help you find or understand new issues. GBE is structured like a human brain neural network, everything related is listed and linked in both directions so users landing anywhere in GBE can avoid drop down menus and go straight to the related pages or topics in one click.
GBE has initiated discussions with Association for Environment Conscious Building (AECB) about capturing its guru members know-how before it is lost to all and planning to mine their Forum for golden nuggets and organising for dissemination.
GBE has been invited by Building Biology Association (BBA) to work with them to develop healthy building specifications for wider dissemination.
Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) has approached GBE after ‘bats and birds in low energy buildings’ to consider a follow up book, aimed at bat workers to help them understand existing buildings better.
All of these activities will add to the richness of Green Building Encyclopaedia.

Thank you – http://www.build-news.com/