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In Manchester, for example, students now have to incorporate technical design elements such as, Structures, M&E and Sustainability into their projects, so the course is teaching them a more integrated approach, which is how it is in real life.. IP: What are the benefits of incorporating technical design into their project at an early stage?.HH: If we come along at a later date and try to apply a sustainable strategy or passive design measures to a building, it’s likely to impact on the architecture quite significantly.

If, however, they incorporate it at the start, they can make it part of their building design and it can be a lot more effective and a lot more cost effective as well.. IP: How does the focus on sustainability manifest at Bryden Wood?.HH: Sustainability is a broad term and I think you can separate it up quite a lot.In terms of what we do here at Bryden Wood, we’re mostly focused on the environmental side of sustainability.

We have a focus on building physics, with the aim of reducing energy costs for occupiers, as well as reducing carbon emissions.We’re also particularly committed to looking at the whole life of a building, so this also encompasses the embodied carbon within materials — from construction methods all the way through to how that material operates.

It’s very much a cradle to grave approach.

We tend to not necessarily go for environmental ratings, so we can offer BREEAM, but it doesn’t have to be applied to every project.In the UK there’s Level 2 BIM.

In Australia, different states are following different approaches.In Queensland any government project over 50 million dollars must be fully BIM detailed, with a set of requirements related to output and deliverables.

That said, he believes that the contracting market is engaging for compliance, not necessarily to be more efficient.He talks about Transport for New South Wales, who’ve come up with an amazing, digital engineering framework to set the output requirements they want the industry to meet.