Should You Dust or Vacuum First?

Once we clarify the structure of the briefing information, we identify key stakeholders.. We conduct extensive engagement with clinical and non-clinical staff, as well as patients and visitors.

We must consider elements such as building orientation, the optimisation of facades to balance seasonal heat loss and gain, enhancing daylight and using natural or mixed-mode ventilation.To truly achieve sustainability in design, we should use passive design measures as much as we can to address health and wellness related challenges, as we search for a balance between wellness and energy efficiency.

If we’re pumping air into our buildings to make sure the environment is clean, are we wasting energy?Focusing on sustainability in design with passive design measures can help us rely less on mechanical systems.When we do use them, it’s important to make sure they’re energy efficient — they need to be properly designed, set up and commissioned.. Construction technology: data and computer modelling.

As time progresses and construction technology advances, the importance of data and computer modelling in sustainable design continues to grow.A few years ago, we had only very basic computer modelling to help us understand what to expect from a building’s energy performance.

These days, additional layers of data are being added in, so that our design decisions are really being driven by data now.

This enables us to make better, sustainable design choices, and to improve a building’s performance right from the start.The working assumption generally held in the pharmaceutical industry is that beyond the formulation of an accepted project concept, iterative and questioning approaches offer less value and maybe pose risks in later design stages.

Therefore, the approach is to decide on a single concept to integrate the engineering structurally in an EPCM type contract and to focus purely on deliverables..This idea does not match reality and undermines the ability to both hold on to and even augment the delivered value.

As described by Henry Mintzberg about business strategy, engineering design will always include a combination of deliberate and emergent components.. Pretending a high level of fixation at best is counterproductive and at worst destructive to the project’s ability to deliver value.This is not the dreaded “change” or “scope creep”, it is about how the proposed project scope will naturally mould and how it can be integrated with how it will be delivered both in its physical, digital, and operational forms.