Graham Bonnett

The Advancing Prefab event, now in its seventh year, has earned a reputation as an essential gathering for the construction industry.

Future of Construction.The industry needs a shift in business models, moving away from return on capital employed to a focus on sustainability and innovation.

Achieving net-zero carbon goals is critical, and future construction must be more digitally integrated and collaborative.When we talk about the sustainable design of buildings, we have two core objectives: reducing environmental impact, and providing a healthy space for occupants.For this reason, implementing a sustainable design strategy incorporates every aspect of the building process, from the earliest design stages through to construction and post-completion.Evaluating an asset’s performance, and understanding how its entire environment operates, forms a key part of our work within Sustainability and Building Physics at Bryden Wood.

We look at how a building gains heat in summer, or loses it in winter; how it requires natural or artificial light; as well as issues like temperature control, moisture and air movement.Although some of the focus on this topic was lost in the last recession, the industry’s renewed commitment to sustainability in design is intensifying.

This is in large part due to the climate emergency and our need to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

However, it’s also due to our simple desire to create the best buildings we can; those which promote health and well-being for occupants, and are comfortable, durable and safe to use.. WELL building standards and passive design.This can translate to low reliance on mechanical cooling and potentially exceptional PUE values..

Using water for adiabatic cooling allows the unit to cool the air close to the wet bulb temperature of the ambient air as opposed to the dry bulb temperature (dry cooling).Due to the wet bulb temperature being often many degrees below coincident dry bulb temperature, in high dry bulb conditions this can mitigate the requirement for mechanical cooling.. Data Centre with DEC unit.

Chilled water system flexibility.The most common systems installed in data centres use chilled water as the medium between the internal and external units.