Watch: Platforms in Practice Webinar with Steven Tilkin

A platforms approach to construction has a profound impact on productivity, cost, carbon, skills, safety, and the potential for digital workflows to automate key pieces of the design process.

between the BaU scheme and the as-built performance of the P-DfMA scheme.This is a significant improvement which can be attributed to both the use of DfMA and the low carbon specification of materials..

Embodied carbon comparisons.The breakdown on a whole life basis (the embodied carbon both on day one and ongoing across the next 60 years, accounting for any maintenance and repairs and what happens when the building or components are at their end of life), shows the superstructure, external wall including curtain walling, and MEP to be the predominant contributors to the whole life carbon.These are the main areas where lessons can be learned on how to reduce embodied carbon.. As-built embodied carbon analysis.

There is a perception across the construction industry that operational carbon is more significant than embodied carbon.Our results show that operational carbon is expected to account for around a third of whole life carbon over the next 60 years (decarbonisation of the electricity grid is not currently accounted for).

This operational carbon is based on NABERS Design for Performance modelling and is monitored during the building’s first year of occupation.. At two thirds of the whole life carbon of a building, embodied carbon is critical to address in the early design stages and provides the greatest opportunity for overall carbon impact reduction..

Operational carbon vs embodied carbon.Reducing the boiler size from a 15kw electric boiler to a 3kw boiler would reduce carbon by 1.69 kgCO2/m2.

Reducing the number of radiators from 10 to just one would reduce carbon by 10.7 kgCO2/m2.Reducing the size of the photovoltaic array from 24 to 12 units would reduce carbon by 12 kgCO2/m2.

All the above items added up together would mean just a reduction of around 4.7 kgCO2/m2, mainly due to the simplification of the heating and photovoltaic systems.Compared to a residential LETI 2020 (Band C) target building (A-C) with a total embodied carbon of 675 kgCO2/m2, that is equivalent to just 0.7% reduction in carbon..