As operational carbon (carbon used during the building's life) decreases due to better technology and design practices, embodied carbon becomes a larger proportion of a building's overall carbon footprint.. 4.
Johnston elaborates, explaining that the project employed an ‘evidence based approach’ to ‘balance various and often contradictory [stakeholder] needs.’ These included those of individual clinical specialisms, nursing staff, catering providers, facilities and maintenance providers, the Care Quality Commission etc...Ultimately, Johnston explains, this facilitated an ‘overall optimum outcome,’ which he describes as being a combination of fantastic patient experience, minimised costs, optimised use of DfMA and more.
‘We aren’t aware of anyone doing it in this way before,’ says Johnston, ‘because anyone who could do the stakeholder piece couldn’t then design the DfMA systems and vice versa...’.As the Reading project demonstrates, working in this way drives a great number of efficiencies and Johnston remarks that ‘Circle were highly supportive of the design and delivery approach developed for them evolving in this way,’ noting that they ‘have always been keen to share best practice with other clients.’.Indeed, as Wood points out, the benefits of Platforms can be applied across typologies, from healthcare to educational facilities and housing.
As time progresses and ushers in vastly increased productivity demands for the construction industry, the use of digital technologies and automation will provide a key solution to facilitating the necessary increases, as well as generating an array of client, end-user and societal benefits.It’s a methodology which facilitates higher accuracy, reduced costs, less waste, improved user experience and performance.. To this end, Circle Reading provides a glimpse into the efficiency anchored future of architecture, delivering a 25% cost savings on Circle’s previous Bath hospital and being delivered in just over eighteen months.
Uniquely, the focus for the facility was designed to be on cost per clinical outcome, rather than square meterage, or other metrics traditionally associated with buildings.
In addition to this, Wood comments that patient experience ‘was paramount.’ ‘Circle Reading, we believe,’ he says, ‘balances these two factors to a degree that’s not been seen in hospitals, certainly in the UK, before.’.It’s when those big owners start making demands that the shifts occur.
She refers to big-budget school programmes as an example and talks about their need for operational consistency, usually over large geos.However, she cautions that after owners demand the change, it’s important they’re involved in allowing people to change the process to decrease risk and make things possible.. Jaimie Johnston points out that people often want innovation, but they want it to be tried and tested, without extra risk.
They want a sophisticated way of delivering, but through an existing framework, an existing set of contracts, an existing set of contractual terms.. “No one doubts that you can deliver an asset using some of these technologies, he says, “but it's the framework of procurement methodology and contracts, and IP, and warranties and insurances - all those other things that need to change.”.“What I'm finding now,” says Amy Marks, “is that they love industrialised construction, they want to understand certainty, so they're starting to dictate and decouple the process of construction and productising it.”.
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