The fourth industrial revolution has often been proclaimed as that of AI, Machine Learning, the internet of things, but the fourth industrial revolution needs to be about decarbonisation.

We can turn to techniques such as robotic welding to make the parts, for example, and use popular distribution warehousing equipment on site.Such processes require fewer people and increase worker safety.

In a socially distanced, post Covid-19 world, the advantages are even greater.. Standardisation in construction: making the most of what works best.It’s worth stressing again that standardisation in construction is not a negative, and it’s not unique to platform design either.We’ve found that most clients want a certain level of standardisation.

The Department for Education knows exactly what the best performing teaching space looks like.Most residential developers have a pattern book of apartments, which are best suited for their needs.

They don’t want to design from scratch each time.

Standardisation makes future maintenance easier.Put simply: if we build less, we emit less carbon.. Low embodied carbon and the future of sustainable design.

It’s generally understood that changing material specification can help reduce embodied carbon and create a more sustainable design and build process.What is often not mentioned is that we can also achieve reduced embodied carbon and capital cost through optimisation and reducing the volume of building, and the earlier this is considered the bigger the carbon savings.. Bryden Wood have demonstrated that through optimising architectural layouts, we can produce higher net to gross ratio space.

We do this by enhancing circulation and ancillary spaces and providing more useful, flexible space.With the reduction in internal floor area, there is less space to be conditioned with expensive MEP systems, less structure and less external envelope.