Every degree closer results in mechanical cooling being eliminated for potentially hundreds of hours, leading to significant energy savings.
I believe the lack of clarity around nomenclature in the DfMA landscape has become a major barrier to change.A clear and universally understood definition framework would help increase stakeholder awareness and confidence in adopting innovative construction methods and could help encourage a more structured and focused conversation across the industry at large..
The minefield of different terms means there is a tendency to assume that the landscape is complicated but there really is a simple relationship between all these different elements and it starts with DfMA.. DfMA is a design approach.The clue is in the name.“Design for Manufacture and Assembly” is a design approach.
Conventional design either has a presumption towards conventional construction or is agnostic regarding the construction method.Conversely, a DfMA design is developed to be constructed in a particular way..
When designing for manufacture and assembly, the designer must find the best way to meet the client’s requirements by considering the most efficient way to manufacture elements of the building and the most efficient way to assemble them on site.
Manufacturing and assembly processes can be carried out in off-site or near-site factories and consolidation centres and also within the site itself.. DfMA means the designer needs to consider the construction methods that will be used from early in a project.These ambitions, translated to the built environment, can only be achieved via the implementation of measures to reduce operational and embodied carbon of new buildings, upgrading existing buildings, the use of ambitious policies and crucially via a decarbonised grid..
The built environment contributes to around 40% of the UK's total carbon footprint.Based on UKGBC’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings “A framework definition", a typical Cat A office’s building embodied carbon, after the first year of use, would be 75% of the total carbon, whilst the operational carbon would be around 25%.
Although the operational carbon will accumulate overtime, a decarbonised grid will mean that the growth rate will flatten, and after 60 years the embodied carbon will still remain higher than operational carbon, as shown in Figure 2.This means that the focus and the priority should shift from operational to embodied carbon during the design..