1            Give a brief overview of your business, including size and geographical reach:

• 45 years in Construction starting with training as technician and Architect, 36 years as Specification Consultant, 20 years as Environmental Consultant, 13 years in University Education; 17 years were developing websites.
• Primary focus now is disseminating what I know through Green Building Encyclopaedia (GBE) website, GBE Learning and developing Green Building Calculator (GBC) to support users addressing the Climate Emergency.
• BrianSpecMan provide the service and has a team of specialists to call on for guidance
• BrianSpecMan goes to anywhere in the UK to participate in projects
• BrianSpecMan participates in EU Interreg Projects so travels to Europe as needed
• GBE GBC and GBL websites all have Global reach.

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2             Who would be most interested in your services?

Anybody who wishes to engage in well performing, competent, Eco-Design, low carbon building,

GBE & GBC Users: All Construction professionals; Architects, Surveyors, Technicians, Universities, Students, Graduates, Building Designers, Design & Building Contractors, Energy Consultants, Carbon Consultants, Facilities Managers, Clients, Self-Builders, Energy Performance Contractors.

Manufacturers and Suppliers: needing to have their product performance data included in GBC.

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3             What do you consider to be the outstanding points of the products/services you offer?

There are many versions of isolated single functional calculator tools out there;

GBC is a multi-functional calculator:

• once the building is sized and quantified in GBC,
• calculations and their results feed through many calculators simultaneously
• providing many results,
• warns of non-compliance and
• invites resizing or improved performance of relevant components (e.g. Insulation and windows) until passes and long term lower costs are achieved across the board.

Post-Grenfell it has become clear that bad choices are being made:

• GBC will have the ability to:
• Help users to only choose between appropriate products in particular applications
• Prevent the making of incompetent decisions inside GBC

The Construction Industry is effectively bankrupt with many main-contractors surviving by not paying their supply chain for as many months as possible and putting them all under severe financial and mental strain.

• Quantity Surveyors habitually help in the quest for the ‘race to the bottom’ (lowest initial cost)
• Cost planning with inadequate out of date building price books is partly to blame and sets the treadmill rolling
• GBE has its own built in Bill of Materials, quantities, costs, labour cost, calculator so designers can do their own cost planning based on current manufacturer costs obtained on the phone or from websites and recent tender rates.
• All added into the Green Building Calculator Bill of Costs
• Any change in the materials and products or thicknesses automatically adjusts the cost plan
• True Value Engineering (not cost cutting) can be carried out
  • where any change in the building specification:
  • will result in a full range of changes in performance calculators whose results can be interrogated instantly
  • not just the initial cost savings
  • but all the ramifications:
    • Upfront cost
    • Upfront energy
    • Upfront carbon
    • In use energy savings
    • In use cost
    • In use carbon

 

Computer Aided Design (CAD) with Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been making big noises for some time about its ability to interrogate the ‘Building Model’ and analyse its performance or greenness.

• CAD BIM dose not do this, is enables creation by its users, of Bills of Materials (BoM) (counting up quantities of instances of the same items ‘Objects’ throughout the whole building model).
• Materials and Products in the CAD BIM Model will have ‘attached’ (Object Linking and Embedding) Product Data Sheets with a limited range of the material’ properties.
• Integrated plug-in applications (Apps) will interrogate the BoM, the ‘attached’ Product Data Sheets and its own equations or algorithms and calculate specific results or performances.
• GBC is being developed to become a CAD BIM App by keeping it’s interface simple and allow it to interrogate BoM and other geometric information whilst it remains a simple MS Excel without Macros nor resorting to embedded programming
• GBC will be able to interrogate a great deal more properties from its integrated product and materials data sets and imported other source datasets

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4              Have you any certifications, media recognition or won other awards in the past?

• National Green Specification Ltd., Brian Murphy & Green Building Encyclopaedia have been awarded 24 times since 2016
• GBE appeared in 100 Innovative days by GCGP LEP in 2015
• The most important and relevant award category being Behavioural Change award in 2016 and commended in 2019 by Leeds University – Leeds Sustainability Institute RISE Awards
• Green Building Calculator Version 1.0.0. was only released 26/06/2020 and has not had time to attract awarding body attention.

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5              Can you support your nomination with any feedback from your customers? These can be testimonials or links to online reviews.

• University Tutor and Student feedback:
• Continuing Professional Development feedback
• Other Feedback

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6             What is your long term strategy/future objectives or are you launching anything new?

• Green Building Calculator Versions 3 to 15
  • Scroll down to ‘Versions 3 and beyond’
• Bespoke development of Green Building Calculator

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Any further information (including links to press releases, news stories etc.) you would like us to include in your supporting file:

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Press release: Launch of Green Building Calculator 26^th June 2020

Green Building Encyclopaedia has launched Green Building Calculator. The product provides information regarding Energy Consumption, Carbon in use, Cost of building and Cost of running a building. Different building shapes, methods of construction, materials choices and resultant energy demand and consumption can be compared. The information provided is impartial, so that the right choices can be made.

Users will understand why 50 mm of stone wool insulation, shown in the ageing textbooks, is no longer enough and sometimes has the wrong properties for the application. They will be able to do their own U value calculation independently of manufacturers or suppliers who will do them for free, without obligation.

Green Building Calculator can be used by clients, to do their own project analysis; self-builders, to check that quotes with specifications meet building targets, before they buy; building designers i.e. architects, technicians and technologists, CAD users, surveyors, M&E engineers, D&B constructors, small builders; design students; EPC, BREEAM, SAP, SBEM assessors, home energy advisors, energy consultants, overheating assessors, building performance advisors and carbon reduction consultants; the developer’s team; constructors and contractors; facilities and property managers; and University lecturers.

Green Building Calculator is available for purchase and download via https://greenbuildingcalculator.uk

Brian Murphy commented: “With XR Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg’s behaviour change campaign, Architects Declare and Architects Climate Action Network, as well as Government bodies declaring and becoming involved in environmental design in a bigger way, architects and other professionals now have a quick way of creating greener buildings or easing their way into the New Normal.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES

Brian Murphy is a technician and architect by training, specification writer by choice, university lecturer / studio tutor, author and environmentalist by action. Brian is the founder and creator of Green Building Encyclopaedia, a growing information resource about creating healthy, environmental and efficient buildings.

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Email: brianspecman@icloud.com
Tel: 01733 238148
https://greenbuildingencyclopaedia.uk
https://greenbuildingcalculator.uk

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GBC on GBE

• In depth
• PowerPoint of GBC V1.0.0.
• Introduction
• Case Studies
• About
• Scope at launch
• Worksheets
• Features & Benefits
• Version Development
• GBE Shop and Prices