Articles:

A Platforms approach to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA) delivers significant benefits to a project, including: reduced costs, reduced programme time, reduced carbon, reduced numbers of workers required to build, increased health and safety, increased quality, increased flexibility and adaptability.. And we can deliver all of this with no compromise on the aesthetic quality of the building.

One topic which must be addressed in relation to the reduction of embodied carbon is the sustainable use of building materials.This is an issue we’re particularly focused on at Bryden Wood, in our work with Platform construction.

This transformative kit-of-parts approach enables a reduction in the quantity and weight of building materials.With Platform construction we know exactly which components will go into a building.As a result, we’re able to give considerably more care and consideration to the design, procurement and construction of each individual part.

Platform construction offers us a wide range of improvements when compared to traditional construction — it’s faster, safer and more cost effective, for a start.However, one of the biggest benefits Platform construction offers is to give us more control, which ultimately facilitates meaningful embodied carbon savings..

When we look to use sustainable design techniques to reduce embodied carbon in a building, we first seek to reduce the quantity of building materials used.

After this, we evaluate the material type.Increased use of standardised, repeatable, design and components inherently lead to less variance and more standardised tasks on site, which already reduces the risk of the need for changes and thus the potential to deviate from the original design..

The greater use of consistent, digital workflows through design, procurement and manufacturing will extend into of logistics and labour; predicting operative numbers, positioning them on site and schedule their training and workload.This level of control is unremarkable in manufacturing, extraordinary in construction.. 2.

Standardised labour operations.The reliance of traditional construction on variable quality of workmanship/skill of the site operative makes it difficult to guarantee that what was drawn and specified is actually what is installed..