I was involved in the nuclear sector when I was first approached to be an advisor in the UK Government Department of Energy and Climate Change.

The software has some superb features, including a ‘stability check’ to ensure the proposed design is suitably robust, a photorealistic rendering engine and an instruction-making tool to create assembly manuals in the same style as for the sets manufactured by Lego..The tool is also integrated into the Brick Link marketplace, so once a design is complete (and even as it is being developed) the price is constantly displayed, parts can be interrogated, and the bricks can be ordered direct from the marketplace.. What can we learn?.

The marketplace hosts its own configurator, making it possible to see how the price changes as design decisions are made, and then to procure the exact components needed.This capability would be enormously powerful for Platforms, helping clients and designers see the effect of decisions in real time, in terms of cost but also potentially carbon, social and other value criteria..The configurator is a piece of software developed to leverage standard components made by the original manufacturer; for construction Platforms it is entirely possible that a range of configurators will be needed, albeit built on some common, open protocols and using common components.

Repeat clients may want to create their own configurators linked to their internal business processes, for instance, but the ‘Spatial Analysis’ work could help create a common ‘operating system’ for construction.Brick Link hosts thousands of third parties from which one can select by region, rating, price etc.

In a Platform context this would mean selecting the most local supplier, or one that best aligns to your choice of value driver.

It’s a community; as well as a transactional marketplace, people can also share ideas and designs.However, for an ultra-low energy building, like Passivhaus, the breakdown would be 77% embodied and 23% operational and this balance is likely to become more enhanced with the decarbonisation of the grid.

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.