Our global population is increasing rapidly – it’s estimated to reach 11.5 billion by 2050.

I’ll develop this much further below, but a digital marketplace for construction would allow clients to publish their requirements for standard components or repeatable designs, for example, and allow a wide range of suppliers to bid to supply them..This is obviously predicated on consistency of demand; when every construction project is bespoke, it’s impossible for manufacturers (other than material suppliers who make highly standardised, commoditised products like rebar) to develop products that are likely to be used repeatedly.

But consistency of demand will come with other forms of progress, like widespread adoption of construction Platforms.We will come back to this as well..When achieved, this will benefit construction in a range of ways.. Firstly: it would provide greater market transparency and diversify the supply chain, meaning that companies of all sizes could engage with large-scale programmes, in the private and public sectors.. Secondly: late payment (particularly between contractors and their supply chains) has been a well-recognised problem in construction for a few decades.

It means smaller suppliers, to whom cashflow is critical, operate in a state of uncertainty and ‘financial distress’.Late payment is, unsurprisingly, one of the key triggers of insolvency..

Even way back in 2013, the Government’s ‘Construction 2025’ vision proposed that construction should no longer be characterised by ‘late delivery, cost overruns, commercial friction, late payment’.

While this has been partly addressed through legislation such as the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 and the Prompt Payment Code, it is still a problem.. A digital marketplace would help make payments more timely – in some cases even instant.Bryden Wood’s approach to adaptive reuse uses a clear operational and embodied carbon hierarchy, as shown in the diagrams below.

Our sustainable design approach prioritises the reduction of energy demand via a ‘fabric first’ approach, combined with passive and active design measures (‘be lean’).To reduce operational carbon, we first explore any possibility of reusing buildings that already exist.

‘build nothing’) as the main route to reducing embodied carbon.Further, all our projects are based on ‘lean design’ with the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) where feasible (‘build less’).. Reusing buildings can produce a substantial saving in embodied carbon, but the quantum depends on the extent of the refurbishment.