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Professor Glass explains that as we turn our efforts towards shaping the future of construction, one of the areas we need to prioritise is our action on net zero and climate change.

As most projects are currently prototypes, there is very little opportunity to test something out before it becomes a live project.On our current project for Landsec, we’ve witnessed the benefits of prototyping everything in advance at our testing facility in Ropley.

This certainty from testing should continue to reduce the risk profile, making us more attractive to investors.. What role does government play in the future of construction Platforms?.Since mandating BIM back in 2011, the UK government has played a crucial role in the effort to turn a Platform approach to construction into a reality.There’s been a real consistency to their approach and they have continued to focus their spending power to promote Modern Methods of Construction.

Moreover, the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA) who, to some extent, hold the purse strings around infrastructure spending, have also been pushing the construction Platforms agenda..In Asia, we’ve seen the Singapore government encouraging ‘Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction’ (PPVC), and we’ve also seen a focus on Modular Integrated Construction (MIC) in Hong Kong.

Both markets have geographical constraints.

Singapore is very land-constrained and has limited ‘internal’ modular manufacturing capacity, but imports have good access to the Malaysian and Indonesian markets.Non-standard sinks come in non-standard sizes, and large lab sinks need to be supported due to the potential for a large mass of water within.

As well as splashbacks, there should be no gaps between lab furniture and lab sinks as dirt can accumulate.The aim is to ensure there’s no surface that can’t be easily reached for cleaning.. Ceilings in labs can help reduce the surfaces for dust to settle on, such as the various high-level services.

The counterargument to this is that the ceiling itself is one large dust trap.In our experience, the ceiling type is dictated by the services; a ceiling can provide a plenum for air distribution at very low air velocity to the room, which is good for labs with a high air change rate, but it can also limit the space for service crossovers and distribution.. One final note is that the colour scheme of a lab can have a big effect on the users, not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also for safety reasons.