What is the problem?

• Despite 40 years of objections to the climate crimes carried out by society as a whole, big business and the Construction Industry in particular, nobody was listening.
• I was able to join the Sustainability Revolution only 20 years ago.
• But still nobody was listening, until XR Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and school children’s behaviour change campaigns took a hold.
• Architect’s and many others have Declared and bringing the attention of their existing and future clients to the urgency for change.
• Architects Climate Action Network are rapidly making plans to change how we operate in future.
• Coronavirus has given us a moment to contemplate and reconsider what and how we do things in future.
• Coronavirus gave me a chance to start to develop existing tools to help address some of the issues.

Why did I build the calculator? I want I want I want

• I want clients with aspirations and objectives for a Healthy, Environmental, Useful building:
  • To know they can engage a building designer who has the tools and skills to meet their brief
  • To be able to invest well and get what they want; not be driven down the business as usual cost cutting route
  • To know that their green design will survive all the way to completion on site
• I want Quantity Surveyors to:
  • Do Value Engineering not cost cutting disguised as Value Engineering; but they never look at the bigger picture
  • Create the ‘Green Building Price Book’ we discussed 20 years ago to become a reality, inside a design tool
  • I want multi-functional materials, products and systems to replace many singular function alternatives and succeed in Value Engineering processes
  • I want Specification Substitution to be done with all the facts and figures available about the consequence of every change, other than just cost savings for the contractor
• I want environmental consultants, energy advisors to be able to model buildings and find their weaknesses in terms that building designers cannot continue to ignore
• I want building designers to be able to
  • Do their own Cost Planning without a QS, based on the cost of doing it greener and better, not just normal and half hearted, cheapest wins every time
  • Immediately understand the environmental impact of their construction or refurbishment methods and make better informed choices of materials or products
  • Have access to competent elemental assembly datasets to choose from and adopt or adapt competently, if in the absence of know-how to assemble their own.
  • Compare alternative scenarios easily and quickly and to begin to build an understanding and in time be able to intuitively choose lower impact materials and methods
  • Intelligently interrogate the bill of materials and do environmental analysis on the fly.
  • Access generic materials and product datasets at their fingertips to adopt, apply and interrogate designs
  • Know where a product was invented to be used and not risk its inappropriate application
  • Close the performance gap: energy, airtightness, initially other characteristics later.
  • Have multi-functional tool that interrogates the same building model/dataset that users only have to build once
  • Submit to architectural competitions and awards that insist on embodied energy, embodied carbon, sequestered carbon, energy and carbon in use, as part of the criteria for success with an appropriate weighting.
• I want tenderers to be able to price the job properly, not chasing some false cost plan, to allow trades people to have the time to care and do a competent job using proper materials
• I want BIM to live up to its expectations and hype and to do all the wonderful things that are promoted

‘Be the change you want to see in the World’

• I am reminded by Mahatma Gandhi
• So I will build a tool to enable us all to be able to do all those things and more.

Green Building Calculator V1.0.0 (GBC)

What does it do already?

• • Preview the screen shots here GBE Page or read below:
  • Does what you want, but thought that you
    • Could never do yourself
    • Had to pay an arm and a leg for
  • Brings together many calculations in one place, all interlinked so one change filters throughout
  • All the parts are in place,
    • Correct format linked to correct data sources
    • No more searching your ‘college-knowledge’
  • User input:
    • Numbers of buildings, lengths, widths, heights
    • Set room working temperatures
    • Set hours of operation
    • Building Element selection and sizes
  • It works out:
    • areas, volumes calculations
    • Room by room losses for radiator or boiler sizing
    • Form factor to help determine U value targets
  • Allows users to: compare and target:
    • Regulations and Design Guides
    • Elemental U values/Airtightness targets
    • Insulation material k values with the chosen U value targets determine Thicknesses in all elements
  • Allow user to
    • Assemble Elemental, choose functional components, select materials or products
    • Determine thicknesses to meet target U values
    • Compare Insulation thickness and costs
    • Compare Glazing specification and cost
    • Analyse the result of spending more money on more insulation and/or more expensive glazing
  • Generates a Bill of materials, quantities,
    • users add materials and labour coats, to do your own cost planning
  • Automatically generates a Whole Building Energy Demand readout
    • Allows the users to instantly interrogate Elemental % Cost & Energy Comparisons
    • Encourages reconsideration of previous choices to reduce energy consumption in use
    • Allows user to choose fuel source to get an instant In Use Carbon readout
  • See bottom of article for access to this file.

What it does not do

• It does not replace AECB’s CarbonLite & CL Retrofit or Passivhaus’s PHPP and EnerPHit but enables many to experience what they do to a building that is future-proofed and comfortable.
• Users wanting to do Passivhaus need to get formal training before they can focus more on the thermal bridge and air tightness details, calculations, etc.
• GBE V1.0.0. has a relatively low level of granularity, and will get more detailed as it develops

GBC Future development versions:

• GBC will establish a stakeholder steering group
• One of the first tasks will be to determine the user’s preferred order of development
• These are GBC’s suggestions
• Version 2 (Month 4)
  • Domestic Retrofit: interface development
  • Bill of Materials, Quantities, Labour, Materials, Costs development
  • Form Factor Calculator development
  • Decrement Delay Calculator:
  • EE EC SC Calculator:
  • ICE database 1.3 > 3
  • Bill of Materials Quantities Costs
  • Non-External Envelope Components (Foundations, Frame, Stairs, Partitions, Furniture, Interiors, Landscape)
  • Services: systems of kit, appliances cables, pipes, ducts, conduits, accessories, insulation,
  • Guidance on how to populate the Bill of Rates (BoR) Bill of Costs (BoC)
• Version 3
  • Product Datasets
  • Materials Datasets
• Version 4
  • GBE 2D View
  • Building Section Coding (DDL LUP and Concatenation)
  • 892 Building Elemental Assembly Code Numbers (Identification)
  • 892 Readymade Competent Elemental Assemblies
  • 892 Readymade Competent Elemental Assemblies + Others
  • Bespoke Elemental Assemblies
  • Material Applicability to Application (Appropriate and Competent)
  • Product Applicability to Application (Appropriate and Competent)
  • Specification Generator
• Version 5
  • Non-Domestic Retrofit:
  • Domestic Newbuild:
  • Non-Domestic New build:
• Version 6
  • Building Price Books may not be a useful service (part of the Race to the bottom?)
  • Guidance on how to populate the Bill of Rates (BoR) Bill of Costs (BoC)
  • Building Labour Rates
  • Materials Rates
  • Services Scope
  • Services Rates
  • Services Labour Rates
  • Services Costs
• Version 7
  • Condensation Check
  • Thermal Bridge Calculator
  • Secondary Element Calculator: (Windows, Doors, Rooflights, Curtain walling)
  • Thermal Mass Calculator
• Version 8
  • GBE Green Building LCA Calculator
  • LCA Database
• Version 9
  • Landscape
  • Landscape Rates
  • Landscape Labour
  • Landscape Costs
• Version 10
  • Civils and Infrastructure
  • Civils and Infrastructure Rates
  • Civils and Infrastructure labour
  • Civils and Infrastructure
• Version 11
  • Waste Calculator
  • Embodied Energy and Carbon in Waste
  • Embodied Energy and Carbon in Reclaim
  • Sequestered Carbon in Reclaimed Timber
• Version 12
  • Plastic Free V Recycled Plastic Products
  • Plastics & Recycled Plastic Content Dataset
  • Alternatives to Plastics Dataset
  • Plastics Diverted from landfill
  • Plastics Avoided
  • Carbon Consumed or Avoided
• Version 13
  • Interiors Fit out, Refit
  • Furniture Dataset
  • Finishes Products Dataset
  • Furniture Impact calculator
• Version 14
  • CAD BIM App
  • Make it interrogate BoM Bill of Materials
  • Interrogate other dimensional information
  • Feedback an elemental assembly that can be CAD’d up as a Library item and deployed in Drawings.

GBC Website

• https://greenbuildingcalculator.uk

© GBE GBC GBL NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan **
9th September 2020 – 27th September 2020

CAPEM Awards

• CAP’EM Investment Building Huddersfield Station Water Tower National Railway Heritage Award G#1311 N#1301

GreenSpec Awards

• BrianSpecMan founded GreenSpec before starting GBE
• GreenSpec Accolades (Award) G#681 N#703