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Going back to the rise of mammals or Homo sapiens, a change in scale is an adaptation to a transforming environment.

And the changing use of building spaces has been exacerbated by COVID reducing the requirement for office space even further..In this context, we have converted offices to pilot labs with a high density of fume cupboards and clean room facilities.

We have also built an incubator/accelerator project; a lab building for startups.The principal MEPchallenge here is catering for the air change requirements, which are clearly much higher in a laboratory than in an office.Doing this has been greatly helped by the 3D modelling that was carried out on the original project.. HVAC upgrades at the Portway.

Also on the Granta Park is a building called Portway.Initially built as a large office complex for one company, we have been working on dividing it up to house nine separate clients.

This has complex implications for mechanical and electrical services.

For obvious technical reasons, each client cannot be serviced separately, so each one has to be monitored separately for energy, airflow and water usage..This means that embodied carbon is becoming a more important focus for the sustainable design of buildings..

Typical operational and embodied carbon breakdown for medium scale residential for a standard building (left) and for an ultra-low energy building.Passivhaus standard has always been focused on operational energy, and it is only in recent years that the focus has grown to both operational carbon emissions and the embodied carbon within the building..

Operational carbon in sustainable building design.From an operational carbon perspective, Passivhaus’ low energy targets mean the dwellings are likely to achieve very low carbon emissions.