603: The Problem With Sustainability (Part 2) Rewriting the Rules of Housing Design with Colin Davis and Suzanne Davenport of Studio Partington: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

603: The Problem With Sustainability (Part 2) Rewriting the Rules of Housing Design with Colin Davis and Suzanne Davenport of Studio Partington

Enoch Sears43min

Speaker 1

00:00

The burden placed on us is increasing, increasing even more so in the last year to six months with the Building Safety Act. Hello

Rion Willard

00:06

and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard, and today we will be joined by Colin Davis and Suzanne Davenport for part two of their conversation, where we're looking at sustainable design and energy efficient housing. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smartpractice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you, please follow the link in the information we are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer with valuable insights to share? We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast. If you're ready to share your journey, lessons, strategies with our global audience, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story, or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag, completed, we'd like to hear from you if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at A larger scale. You

Speaker 1

01:38

know, we're currently working for City of London, you know, to retrofit buildings at the Golden Lane estate, where predominantly it was a project that started as a piece of work to assess how to sort of deal with 1950s windows. You know, of various types that had really come to a point where they were in need of something significant doing to them, either either replacing them entirely or refurbish them in, you know, or or secondary glazing, or whatever it was. And so we came to a project there where, on the face of it, there was a very small piece of work, big, big estate and challenging, but a small piece of work to look at the windows, and there was actually a long process of leading the client through, through the understanding that you can't just make a single change to a historic building by upgrading the windows, whether that's, you know, replacing them or refurbishing them without having other impacts on the building. So needing to think about, you know, ventilation alongside improvements to the windows, and if you're upgrading the windows, well, shouldn't you also be thinking about roofs and and walls and other areas of heat loss? So, you know, over, over a period of time, you move from a project that's trying to think, setting out to tackle one thing, but actually through, through a process of sort of, you know, drawing and suggesting proposals and modeling them in energy terms, you can start to help client understand why a project might need to be slightly different than they originally envisaged. And so that project has grown now. So it's not a complete, you know, whole home retrofit, but it is tackling more and more of the building fabric and making sure that any changes that we do make to the building fabric aren't going to have unintended consequences on other elements, mold and condensation, for example, you know. So, so that was a, you know, that that was quite a, an iterative process, really, with a client where, and actually, in fairness, involving residents as well. So, you know, actually, when you're working on the golden Lane estate, you know, probably, you know, feels like a quarter of the residents or other architects as well. So you can actually have some really interesting, you know, so maybe some quite challenging meetings, but also a really fertile conversation, you know, where, where lots of people are bringing lots of ideas to the table, you know. So that's been, you know, that's been fascinating, and sort of, you know, is, is ongoing, probably be running for another few years whilst we, whilst we, you know, deliver the works to the estate, but, but, but the Retrofit is broad. You know, Suzanne is also in, you know, involved, probably in two, really, you know, extremes of of retrofit, where delivering, um. Things to the past, standard, past 2035, you know where, where there are really strict in order to receive funding, there are really strict rules and processes to be adhered to. And then a project like our energy sprung project in Nottingham, which is a much more dramatic retrofit of homes where really the entire home is really clad, which Suzanne is much better talking about in both

Speaker 2

05:31

those cases. So we're really fundamentally, it's like we're working for really like minded clients. So clients local authority clients who really recognize the massive scale of the issue we have in this country with existing homes that aren't fit for purpose, kind of historic lack of repairs, of stock, residents who really need awful lot of support just to get to a kind of base level of fundamentally being listened to and no longer having issues with their home that might not have been dealt with for years. So, and yeah, we've worked working in for local authorities. So Nottingham, in Lewisham and in Wolverhampton, we've just found, you know, really inspiring. And also working for large contractors. So working for United living, I think we found really, and especially in recent years, I'm really inspiring clients who are really trying to drive, you know, within the limits of funding, which is, you know, a huge challenge at both ends of those scales, whether you're trying to do the the deep whole house Enoch retrofit, that happens while the residents stay in place. It's like putting use industrialized construction as well. So it's like putting a new home over the top of an existing home. And we have a real, you know, amazing. I think opportunity there to transform existing community, keep communities together and transform existing communities. And I think it's like once in a generation, kind of golden opportunity to take these kind of, essentially 60 year old estates dwellings, and make them fit for purpose, make them fit for this century, without wasting huge amounts of buildings and stock and carbon. So for me, Retrofit is, like, incredibly exciting, because it's a way to stick within our carbon budget, and, you know, just strengthen amazing existing communities who are all you know, talk to those residents, because they're the experts in what needs to happen in their local areas. And you can make quite small scale changes, not necessarily high cost ones which can have a really high impact, if you can, you know, engage and really get to the bottom of understanding the problem, and then on. So our other scale of work, we're working for, so the the PAs 2035 under the PAs 2535 standard, and crucially, to the shdf funding. And so funding is really tight. There's limited amount of money, but that's because of the scale of the problem. So I believe we really need to work within that. There's a very, very stringent link between EPC score and getting the money, essentially. So that does tie hands, but I think with those like minded clients who are who really, you know, do want to help, fundamentally, want to help the residents, and we do and our ability, so we're employed as retrofit designers, but we really come as architects. Is that idea again, about hopefully understanding the big picture, having a general approach. And so I think, along with our clients, we're able to as much as possible, bring real bring bring expertise, and hopefully, you know, address some other problems which aren't just tied to the funding. So for instance, making sure we do focus on thermal bridging as well. Test. Work out which are those like at risk junctions, where we might be making things like damp and mold worse. Check those out. Make sure we've got the best approach we can. Is it's never straightforward or easy with retrofitting existing building. Never built how you expected it to be built. It's always a bit of kind of archeology, whatever, however special the building might be, it doesn't matter whether it's it's listed or not, to be honest, it's they're all different, and need quite a bit of care and attention to to address those key items.

Rion Willard

09:35

So is it with the in the world of retrofit? Is it typically then local authorities who have already got existing housing stock that are looking to do it is it

Speaker 2

09:43

really exclusively? At the minute, the dream is to be able to do both. So to be able to do the because we have this like a patchwork tenure in our country. It's the legacy of the right to buy policy from people from the established in the 1980s but very much. Still ongoing. I know the recent the new government is making some attempts to change that, which is kind of interesting to see how that plays out. But I think we're ever going to now get away from the fact that probably what we see is the majority of suburban areas, about 50% still either housing association or council stock and and private homes, and there'll be no, you know, it's pepper potted. There's no which in some ways, is like a positive, because we, I think, we have these fantastic mixed communities in in our country, which, you know, might be a desire when we're doing new build housing that we can't necessarily always achieve. We kind of tend up, tend to end up with social housing in one particular place, or actually the reality of a lot of the communities where we work, because we have this mixed tenure, which has its positives, but also if, if you can't retrofit the privately owned homes, we do have a problem. And I always say it's a bit like trying to keep warm by putting on a vest. We really want a coat that goes over the whole terrace. That's a sensible thing to do, but we're left with this kind of trying to do this piecemeal approach, and then we have to think really carefully about the junctions where you might have a cold neighbor, because you could actually even be making things worse. So it's a super challenge. Hopefully there'll be some kind of financial mechanisms which come forward in the future, because it's what we really need to do, is to do both, both 10 years. And it would be brilliant for private owners as well. People should be able to opt in to these measures far more efficient to tackle whole estates such, I think a dream to be able to tackle not just the physical buildings, but what's around it as well. So to look at landscape, to look at traffic, to look at making streets, not roads, I think, I think there's huge opportunity, and I'm really passionate about it, but the minute that's not quite joining up, yeah, yet. But

Speaker 1

11:56

yeah, you know, our work is almost exclusively, you know, housing associations and local authorities that, certainly in our experience, you know, I imagine that's partly because they've got bigger issues to try and tackle. You know, the scale of stock that the Housing Association or local authority is in possession of is huge, you know, so they're, they're more at the coalface of trying to tackle, you know, these things and and, you know, it's interesting when people come at it from from different angles. You know, one of the big challenges on all the projects has always been, you know, where you've got a client that is genuinely aiming to reduce the cost of living for people in homes, and quite often that's that can be completely at odds with trying to improve the energy efficiency of a home. Because what we quite often find is is you can easily spend a lot of money on on improving the thermal efficiency of a home, but at the point that you know so, so, for example, making 50, 60% reductions in the amount of heat that it's taking to heat a home. But then you swap their fuel source, from gas to electricity, and the chances are that people still are going to be, you know, at best, at the same level that they've been on gas, or possibly higher. So, you know, there are huge, there are huge challenges involved in it, you know. And, yeah, it's, you know, it's just not easy. And I, you know, we certainly, you know, have had some successes, but, but, but, you know, part of the job is just to try and explain what you might actually be able to deliver from Project, and not misleading people that there is a sort of silver bullet that you can go in and you do this, you do this, you do that, and then at the end of it, you're going to deliver everything, energy reductions, cost reductions, blah, blah, blah. It's all going to be super simple. It's, it's it's just really not, you know, it's a hard thing, and it's a they tend to be quite long and kind of complex projects, to be

Speaker 2

14:10

clear about what your drivers are. And so like, as Colin saying, like fuel bills and decarbonizing are are different aims, and have different you need to do different things to achieve that.

Rion Willard

14:24

With your work with local authorities and housing associations. How do you win projects with those guys? Is it a case that you're typically on some kind of framework agreement, that you have to kind of compete to get on, and then there's a pool of work, which you and a group of other architects kind of compete for, or

Speaker 1

14:45

it's a bit of a mystery, if I'm completely honest, I'd love to say we had a we had a silver bullet for that as well, but, but much of our work comes through word of mouth. I. And connection. We a bunch of us, myself, Suzanne Richard, do a lot of presenting at conferences, etc, on our work and on our research, which is a good link in to people. Yes, we are on frameworks, and we we bust a gut all the time to get on them, and then find that they tend to be constantly shifting goal posts. And that's it's getting on frameworks is is increasingly difficult for practices of our size, because you find absolutely arbitrary blockers your turnover. For example, you know the amount of frameworks now that want a turnover that is probably two or three times or more our turnover. And you know, as far as we can see, turnover bears absolutely no relationship to your ability to be able to deliver a successful project, but you know, that's what you're judged by, and so those things are becoming increasingly difficult for us to get onto. We have an odd history of losing projects so competitions where we may become second or third, and the project starts with somebody else, and then a few months or years down the line, a client will come back and say, Do you know what? It didn't work out. Could we have a chat about that project that we didn't give you? You know that that's happened, you know on numerous occasions, really. And so we, you know, we rely a lot on on sort of existing relationships and trying to, you know, keep those as people move from other one client organization to a new client organization, I suppose, and, you know, I think, I think the thing that's helped us, you know, is that we're known for just kind of getting on with things, really, you know, it sounds basic, but just getting on with things, and making things work. So, you know, for example, that that the energy sprung project that that we took on. Nobody had delivered one of those in the UK before, I think. And we said, yeah,

Unknown Speaker

17:28

in 2016 2017

Speaker 1

17:31

and, you know, and it was at a point where I suppose we were, we were testing lots of skills that we either had or would were generating. And actually one of the interesting things you know that was happening around the time of the energy strong project starting was the conversations around BIM and implementing BIM and sort of design for manufacture on projects. And there was lots of discussions about how to do it, what software you should use, what processes you should use. And it felt like those conversations were impacting on, actually just getting on and doing it. So the interesting thing, you know, on the energy sprung, and a couple of other projects that were happening around that time, we were able to move away from just saying, it's, you know, it's got to be Revit to going, Well, look, we don't use Revit, you know, we've, we've 20 years experience of building buildings and designing them using vector works. The software we know inside out. We can deliver 3d models in it. We can deliver the information you need. Let's partner the conversation about how we're getting there. Let's look at the outputs that we're going to give you. And sure enough, you know, we produced 3d information for that project, and the manufacturing business took it and they said, You know what? You know, this is so detailed that we actually have our own modeling package that we've designed ourselves to model these things. We can take your base information and use it to to determine, you know, to be the starting point for our manufacturing model. And it was really nice to for it to be, let's, let's, you know, let's get beyond a really simplistic conversation about it's got to be this, and let's just look at the outputs. Give us a chance to just get on and do our job. We you know, we'll promise, we'll give you what you need. But just, let's get on. Let's trial it. Let's give you some information and see if you can make it work, or together we can make it work. And I think that sort of ethos runs through a lot of our projects, really where, you know, it's just about getting, getting down and doing, you know, rather than getting side tracked with conversations about really lengthy procedures or processes or how you're going to do something, just make a start and. Get on and start designing, start drawing, start modeling.

Rion Willard

20:03

Has there been it's interesting that you're saying this as well about the challenges of being a procurement with these sorts of associations and the kinds of arbitrary things that they might be asking for. And you suspect that it's a list that somebody created at some point that now has become kind of enshrined and never shall. Nobody wants to deviate from it. No, I think

Speaker 2

20:24

sometimes the procurement, you know, the whole procurement process can be almost like a thing in itself. And then, if you actually, you know, the few projects that we have won through getting onto frameworks new part of the work I've done with one of my roles at one point was to spend, you know, I think, almost like six months just focusing on working on getting onto frameworks, trying to win, work through that, that process, but And then sometimes, like the projects that we then win through that which were fairly few and far between, but when we did win them, it wouldn't bear any resemblance, really, the actual project that you won to what was bid for, because all these ideals, say had been put in, but it didn't necessarily reflect the budget that was for the project. Or, you know, you might have answered a whole question in really good faith on what you were going to do for social value in a particular area, but then that never really came through in the project, because it was a, kind of, sadly, been a box ticking exercise in a procurement framework. So I think, yeah, that that we've, we can't we, we still focus on some frameworks. Obviously, we want to work with certain people, so we're always trying to find the right mechanism to do that. But mostly our work has really all been about, like relationships, word of mouth, but then also that reputation, so, like, what Colin was talking about becoming a bit known as being fixes. And then maybe the really key thing that's happened very much on although that stream of retrofit work, which really sprung from that first energy sprung project, and the relate so that project is just incredibly collaborative, and that's continued so the same kind of group of prep, of organizations, so us as an architect or retrofit designer, Milius Holmes as the solution providers, essentially a contractor, But they set up their own factory to industrial, industrialized retrofit Enoch as like a helping hand guardian. But you know, that doesn't really describe their role. They're incredibly involved in, like pre retrofit monitoring and helping to explain the concept to the local authority and the residents themselves, and then the clients themselves. So that kind of group of organizations, I think, I mean, I think we'd like to have done more of it, and are limited by funding and probably this procurement and how to get, how to get in front of particular local authorities and work for them. But That group has really gone ahead, and that's probably how we've worked on a series of retrofit projects following that first project in in Nottingham.

Speaker 1

23:08

And I think, I think, I think the the procurement in all its forms, whether it's procuring a design team you know, or architectural services you know, onto a framework, or whether it's procuring a building contractor to deliver a building, it is just not achieving what it needs to. You know, procurement seems to exist as an activity in and of itself. And so, you know, and I don't want to sound too much like I'm bad mouthing procurement department. Procurement departments however, you know, I think, I think the way they're often monitored is whether they delivered a successful procurement exercise, rather than what did the procurement exercise in and of itself then lead to, you know? So, so you might sit at the end of the procurement process and go, Well, look, we achieved it. We got, we got a dozen architects onto a framework, brilliant, but, but then what? What's the framework actually delivered? Or, you know, yes, we've, we've run through a procurement exercise with a, you know, local authority procurement department to appoint a contractor, and we've got a contractor, but were they the right contractor for the project? You know, quite, quite possibly not. Because, you know, they're very different skills being successful in a procurement exercise to running a successful project. And I think, you know, and so I really fit, you know, I feel for sort of small contractors and smaller builders that don't have the skills to answer all of the questions really brilliantly in a procurement exercise, because when I'm when we're delivering a building, do I want to work with a team that can deliver a tender return, or do I want to deliver it? Do I want to work with a team that can think really carefully about delivering. Complex building project and and so that you know that that's, I see that happening to us as well, where you know we are. So, you know, margins are tight, right? You know, projects are difficult. We need, we need to be spending our time and our energy on delivering projects, which means we, we can't have a, we can't support procurement team or specialists, you know. So, so it's, yeah, it's frustrating, you know, to try and be competing in a world where, you know, we, I think we're very good at what we do, but, but, you know, we, we, we, we put up against organizations with with much bigger resources. You know, that can, can spend time and money on, on bidding for these things. But actually, that's probably unfair, to be honest. I think, I think all architects are struggling with the same, with absolutely the same things, really, you know, it's just, it's just, how do we our the burden placed on us is increasing, increasing even more so in the last, you know, year to six months with, with the Building Safety Act finally being put in, into place. And, you know, they're being increased, you know, burden and emphasis put on, put on our work, you know, but we're expected still to be delivering those services for, you know, trifling, really small amounts of money, you know. So, so something has to change, you know, I'm, I'm positive in that, I, you know, I, I think the, I think what we're being asked to do as architects, you know, and possibly taking on this role of principal designer, for building safety or for building regulations, is a good thing, you know. It's really playing to the strengths being an architect, and it's, you know, and it's a thing I think architects would be very good at doing, but, you know, I'm worried about the financial implications of doing it, you know,

Rion Willard

27:10

which was really and it's interesting as well. And I think I would love to see a kind of revolution, or just a new way of procurement and like, like, the way you're saying actually, often, the way that is the procurement works is kind of just, it is just looking at, did we do a successful procurement? It's very isolated. It's not taking, it's not taking that generalized or generalist approach of what's the actual outcome. Has there ever been any opportunities for you in the same way that you are writing and researching and informing, kind of building technical standards. Is there ever been an opportunity, or could you see an opportunity in the future to be out, for you to be involved in informing housing authorities on their procurement process? It

Speaker 1

27:57

would be great, you know. And that did happen on one of our projects. So our project at dermanthorpe, you know, there was a really well run procurement exercise with that project. Unfortunately, I'm not the best person to talk about it, because I wasn't directly involved in it, but there was, at least, I suppose, the time and understanding was put into the project that if you don't get the procurement right, it doesn't matter how good your design work is or how brilliant your place making is, if If you don't deliver it to in a way that achieves that goal, then you're setting yourself up to fail. So there was at least a project there where there was a recognition of that from, from, from the very, very early days. I mean, I, I have a sort of, you know, strong feeling that that tendering, building projects just isn't doesn't work. You know, the most successful projects that I have worked on in terms of delivering quality buildings where everybody was paid appropriately for what they did, clients were pleased with the outcome designers were pleased with the outcome. Contractors were pleased with the outcome. Were all some form of negotiated contract. So we we maybe established who we thought might be good at delivering the project, and then we went the team went to speak to them, and you worked them all the way through, and we negotiated with them all the way through, yeah, so that there's a really clear understanding of what skills you need to deliver the project. How much is actually going to cost, how much it's going to cost, whether it's buildable, you know. Etc, etc. And, you know, it relies on trust. And you know, it relies on a lot of trust, but you can put checks and balances in to make sure that things being done fairly, you know, fairly in sort of cost terms. But I think, I think that the interesting thing is, you know, it's very expensive for everybody to tender for projects. You know, it's very expensive for contractors, architects, other designers, to tender for projects. So, you know, if you can, if you can formulate a mechanism to get to the end result where the client is is comfortable because they their their main aim, whilst cost is important, quality is also important. You know, is of not equal cost is, is always the most important thing, really, because nobody's got a limitless budget. But, you know, they want to work with somebody in a really constructive way to get to a point where costs are. Costs are certain, as certain as they can be, you know, and everybody feels like they're not being taken for a ride or fleeced through a process. I just think you set, you can set a project up in a way that it's more likely to succeed. Whereas my feeling of procurement exercises is quite often they set up a project that from day one there's a conflict.

Speaker 2

31:25

So then the Nottingham retrofit project had a really interesting approach to procurement. So was it something called a competitive dialog tender process? And it it was. So they set up to so they procured the performance so the energy sprung approach is this outcome led approach. So you you procure a performance target, and then the only way to achieve that is to install monitoring when the in every home, when they're complete. And if there's default against that, the contractors liable. And then the other thing that was really unusual in the process as well, is that the residents were involved in so right from the beginning, the residents of the pilot projects, the first 10 homes that were retrofitted, they they were involved in the procurement decision. So they helped to pick so our team, so we were in, in the tender process, we were engaging with the residents to work out what they'd like to see in their homes. And I think that was one of the key reasons that our team was picked, and then that kind of thread of engagement ran through the whole project, because a retrofit contractor. It's a totally different, totally different role or way of working than a traditional, speculative house building contractor would be. So, you know, you imagine you've got to work every day the residents are living in their homes. You've got to work around them. You've got to get it all, you know, everything's got to stay up and running throughout the whole time. Sequencing is is really key. You've got to communicate all the time. And I think, and you know, as a result of that, the kind of retrofit specialists almost like whole new roles of being resident liaison officers that are all developing in the industry. And I think for me again, like one of the best examples is where we're working with small SMEs, where it's actually, it's the same individuals who are designing the retrofit who are then also doing that resident liaison on a day to day basis. You can see some, like, really positive examples there of really close collaboration. And, you know, small companies being able to provide a kind of higher service, because it can be fully involved individuals

Rion Willard

33:52

just before we conclude. I thought it was very interesting as well, what you were saying about the procurement process and the kind of some arbitrary requirements that they have, and one of them was for you to be Revit based. And actually you you stuck to your guns and use, you know you've been using, you're saying you've been using vector works for a long period of time. As you could talk a little bit more about your usage of that particular software, of using vector works and and also in the context of, like, how did you, how did you convince the the you know, that you didn't need to change, yeah, and I'm sure that's come up a number of times as well, where there's like, from other consultants to change software. So it's more absolutely, I think

Speaker 1

34:35

it, I think so, so, so, you know, we, like lots of architects, I think we started using Vex works at a point where, you know, producing drawings was, was, was really a sort of trying to replicate as closely as you could what used to on a drawing board and and so Vex works felt like. The software that could deliver that, you know, 25 years ago, you know, you could make a beautiful, two dimensional, really nicely cross hatched, you know, drawing that mimic, you know, what you what you produce on a drawing board. And we all, we all liked it for that it was very different to, you know, other other softwares. And and, you know, and we carried on with that sort of process of designing for quite a long time. And in fact, there's still an element of that that we really love about the software, you know, you can do a very quick set of presentation documents from it, you know, for example, but, but, but over time, you know, we and we resisted the sort of shift to the sort of BIM, you know, whatever that is, because we felt like we were delivering good buildings. You know, let's look at the let's be outcome based what are we doing? We're delivering great buildings. Does it really matter how we're doing that we felt confident we could get there in a two dimensional environment, but there was an obvious need to change. And so, you know, over the over a period of years, we sort of tried to shift our processes. And I think we felt like we we would be better off trying to take a piece of technology that we felt we knew inside out and and try and get the results from it, than throwing away everything that we knew and starting from scratch. And I think that was born out really, because what became quite clear is that is is the software that you're using is important, but but getting your modeling conceptually right is even more important. So what are you actually going to model, and what are you not going to model? And so that that became evident to us, that we Yes, we could give we could give people information in a format that they need from vector works. We could deliver that in IFC, we could deliver it in Lyd, DWG. Can actually deliver Revit files directly from vector works now, so we could once we convince people that we could give them information in the format that they needed. The most important thing was then to make sure that your model is actually giving people information that they need, rather than just vast amount of data that you can put into a model, because you can, you know, and so I think, I think on the successful projects, it's where we've managed to convey that, that actually you're just saying, Look, forget about how we're doing it. It's what we're giving you that's important, and it's our again, it goes back to this idea that we as architects should understand fundamentally which bit of information you need to give to which person, rather than producing just going, here's a model, you know, and giving a model to the exactly with all of the information that a structural engineer might Need to the to the person who's doing the irrigation system for the landscape, you know, and so, you know what? What became fundamental was not the software, but in that shift from from doing things in a traditional way to a to a BIM modeled environment, was actually just under, just, just getting understanding what needs to go into the model so that you get the input right, then you've got a better chance of getting the right output. And so we put our time and our efforts into understanding that, rather than in tackling a new piece of software. And actually, it's been great, you know, and, and there are, you know, there's been some really great things that have come out recently. So, you know, we vector works, implemented a embodied carbon calculator built in to their software. So very, you know, very simply enables you to give. Give, assign materials to objects, components, etc. And within those materials is a, is a embodied carbon measure, so a measure of kilograms of embodied carbon per either meter cubed or kilogram or whatever. And you can embed that in your model. And obviously the thing that the model is great for us is extracting quantities, you know? So you can very quickly extract those quantities and apply through the calculator, apply, apply the materials and the and that level of information to it, and very quickly get, get an idea about the impacts that you're making through your design choices, you know. And that's just, you know, it's just been a really simple integration in the software that you know by understanding how to model things properly, and with a little bit of information, you know, knowledge about how to read an EPD. You can suddenly get some really high level, quick results to, you know, to to inform some of your design choices. So, yeah, you know, I, I feel like it's a, it's a conversation we have less and less really about about what software you're using to do something. Just demonstrate to somebody that you can do it. Give them the file, give them the give them the model, share it with them, let them interrogate it. And sometimes, you know what, if, if you're working with the wrong people, you're never going to change their view. Because if they've got to do more than just click one button, they'll, you know, and do something that they've already done. They're maybe going to be unhappy. But, you know, I'd like to think that that the quality of information that we're giving to people means that it doesn't matter whether it's whether it's come from Revit or it's come from anything else. You know, it's a fabulous data, really

Rion Willard

40:58

great. I think that's perfect place for us to conclude the conversation there. That's been absolutely wonderful. I could have asked you loads more questions. I wanted to carry on talking for another for another 45 minutes or so. But thank you so much for your thank you time and expertise today and for lifting, you know, showing us behind the scenes of the studio Partington and giving us really interesting insights into retrofit procurement housing. It's been absolutely fascinating.

Unknown Speaker

41:30

Thank you. Thank you.

Enoch Sears

41:32

Hey, Enoch, Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of. To bring it back, to empower you as an architect and a designer, one thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value, spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast, and as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago. Hello,

Rion Willard

43:05

listeners, we hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it about the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. Interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support@businessfarchitecture.com the views expressed on this show by my guest do not represent those of the host and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you be unstoppable. You.

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