What is sustainable specification?
Sustainable specification is a specifying style that emphasizes responsibly selecting manufacturing and building methods, services, materials and products to align with the three pillars of sustainability. Sustainable specification considers the economic, environmental, ethical and social impacts of a built asset over the entirety of its lifecycle, with an emphasis on sustainable performance at every juncture from asset design to end of life.
Sustainability and NBS
As a company, we approach sustainability from multiple angles. Much of the information surrounding these efforts is available via our website and the Sustainability with NBS webpage.
As a business
We recognize our role as a business in global efforts and are committed to doing our part in building a sustainable future and contributing to our community. To that end, we have joined the UN’s Climate Neutral Now and are participating in other initiatives. NBS, as part of the Byggfakta Group, is aiming for Net Zero carbon by 2030. Our sustainability web page provides information about this commitment, links to our sustainability statement, and highlights our actions to offset our carbon.
As an industry voice
Webinars and articles
To help guide and educate our customers, we have created a sustainability webinar series covering key topics like sustainable outcomes and the RIBA Plan of Work, becoming a sustainable business, and promoting your own sustainability activities and credentials. The webinars are linked at the bottom of the Sustainability with NBS webpage. The hub also links to a selection of sustainability-related articles, and more can be found in the Knowledge section of the NBS website.
Customer guidance
Our specification products contain helpful guidance to aid in specifying for sustainable outcomes, and we are continuously reviewing and building upon that information. The five-part sustainable specification guide adds value to our guidance, serving as a living, sustainability-focused document, with customers, collaborators, partners and other participants providing ongoing insight and information to ensure we are delivering best practice advice based on ever-growing industry experience.
What to expect from the five-part guide
There are so many areas where minor changes in how we specify can make a significant difference. However, with all the noise and jargon surrounding sustainability, sometimes smaller efforts can get lost behind the bigger picture. The five-part guide will help cut through that noise and provide examples of the myriad of ways a project can become more sustainable. Customers can reference the guides, find what they need, and then use them to develop their own personalized approach.
As with all NBS specification guidance, the intent is not to tell you how to specify but point you in the right direction, open your mind to areas you might want to consider and provide input and links to helpful information. Our hope is to arm our customers with a broader level of knowledge and make specifying for sustainability easier.
The guide:
- Aligns with UN goals and tailored to built environment concerns and issues.
- Helps customers specify sustainably in a variety of situations and across multiple disciplines.
- Provides guidance and example mapping across products for Uniclass and CAWS.
- Includes valuable information from manufacturers and trade bodies.
- Offers links to other relevant and valuable information.
What the five parts cover
To create the sustainable specification guide, we have incorporated information from:
- 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- RIBA’s Plan of Work 2020.
- RIBA’s Sustainable Outcomes Guide.
- Industry organization publications.
We’ve then broken down that information and organized, tailored and mapped it in a way that is most useful to specifiers.
One: Sustainable and healthy living at home, work, and play
The first guide addresses issues that align with UN Goals 03, 08 and 11.
- UN Goal 03 ‘Good health and wellbeing’ is where we look at acoustics, air and light quality, thermal comfort, humidity, green spaces, etc.
- UN Goal 08 is ‘Decent work and economic growth’, and we address this goal across two parts. In Guide One, we look at the decent work element, which includes the health and safety elements of a project and built asset and how to take a proactive approach from stage 0.
- UN Goal 11 ‘Sustainable cities and communities’ covers topics like retrofitting, sustainable housing, biodiversity and natural and social environments.
When addressing each topic, we provide general guidance and mapping examples to Uniclass and/ or CAWS. For example, specifying for natural and social environments can be addressed via PM_30_40_08’ Biodiversity performance and requirements’, PM_35_40_34/60’ Habitat creation and protection requirements’, and Ss_45’ Flora and fauna systems (excluding artificial)’, amongst others.
Two: A thriving built environment: production, consumption, economic growth
- This guide aligns with UN Goals 08 and 12.
- We addressed the decent work element of UN Goal 08 in Guide One. In Guide Two, we cover economic growth, providing guidance around sustainable lifecycle costs, sustainable procurement, and soft landings.
- UN Goal 12 ‘Responsible consumption and production’. Specifying examples include materials and product selection, content reuse and recycling, asset refurbishment, reassignment and end of life, net-zero embodied carbon emissions, responsible sourcing, zero-waste production, responsible timber procurement and waste strategies.
Example content found in this guide includes PM_35_10_47 life cycle performance requirements and H11/440 curtain walling (durability).
Three: An eco-friendly and conscientious approach to innovation, infrastructure, and industry
This guide covers UN Goal 09, which deals with industry, innovation and infrastructure. Topics covered include:
- Sustainable connectivity and transport and alternative transportation methods.
- Renewable energy sources.
- Measuring, monitoring and reporting.
- Asset conversions.
- Infrastructure capacity.
- Modern methods of construction.
Content examples include:
- Pr_65_72_97_29 'Electric vehicle charging points'
- Ss_70_10_70 'Renewable power generation systems'
- Pr_40_30_21 'Cycle stands and lockers'
- Ac_15_80 'Site surveying'
- T90 'Heating systems (domestic)'
- V90 ’Electrical, photovoltaic, and small-scale wind generation systems’
Four: Clean and affordable services – water, sanitation, energy
This guide aligns with UN Goals 06 and 07. It provides guidance and specification examples covering areas like sustainable water cycles and water quality, HVAC strategies, natural ventilation, energy use and net-zero carbon emissions, solar shading, whole-life carbon assessments and other clean water and sanitation and affordable clean energy issues. Example Uniclass and CAWS mapping cover everything from SUDS (Uniclass only) to energy use.
Five: Environmental due diligence and climate awareness
The final guide provides specification guidance and example mapping for UN Goals 13 and 15.
- UN Goal 13 is ‘Climate action’, with topics like whole life carbon emissions and a wide range of pollution effects: air, water, soil, noise, and light.
- UN Goal 15 is ‘Life on land’ and is where we consider things like biodiversity, natural habitats and wildlife, site assessments, sustainable land use, living roofs, trees and landscaping, etc.
A vast amount of Uniclass and CAWS specification content addresses the issues that fall under these UN goals. Examples include:
- PM_30_30 ‘Environmental information’
- Ss_70_80_25' External lighting systems'
- C10’ Site survey’
- Q37 ‘Green roofs’
- Ss_45_40_47’ Living roof systems’
Final thoughts
The guide is a five-part, collaborative offering that will remain a living document that improves and evolves. We’ll advise you as new parts become available; NBS remains transparent with our company-wide sustainability efforts, and that information is readily available at theNBS.com. Our webinars and articles are also freely available to the public, and we will be adding to those resources as we go along.
Download the guides
Additional sustainability resources
Webinars and articles
To help guide and educate our customers, we have created a sustainability webinar series covering topics like sustainable outcomes and the RIBA Plan of Work, becoming a sustainable business, and promoting your sustainability activities and credentials. The webinars are linked at the bottom of the Sustainability with NBS webpage. The hub also provides access to a selection of sustainability-related articles, and you can find more in the ‘Knowledge’ section of the NBS website
RIBA Plan of Work 2020 and the Sustainable Outcomes Guide
With the 2020 release of the RIBA Plan of Work, the RIBA has responded to an escalating industry need for an expanded sustainability strategy by mapping sustainability targets to UN Sustainable Development Goals and aligning them with the RIBA Sustainable Outcomes Guide. To explore this and other ways that the new Plan of Work can benefit you, NBS has a webinar series that addresses several topics, including sustainability, fire safety, conservation and inclusive design.
NBS Chorus
NBS has also seen a steady rise in requests for information on how our technical content can help specifiers achieve sustainable outcomes. In the article Using NBS to specify sustainable outcomes on projects, NBS explores how the Plan of Work and NBS’s flexible cloud-based specification platform can be used together to tailor a project to meet sustainability expectations across the project timeline. Through NBS Chorus, you can access your specifications across locations and organizations. Chorus is suited to performance and prescriptive specifying and has editable clauses supported by technical guidance. Our content is reviewed to improve clarity and usefulness, informed by research, user feedback and industry drivers.
NBS Source
NBS Source brings together NBS BIM Library, NBS Plus and RIBA Product Selector to provide a sole source for product information that seamlessly integrates into a project’s workflow and provides an additional level of enhanced product data in a consistent, structured format. Many of the manufacturers listed include environmental and sustainability information in their product listings.
theNBS.com
NBS’s personal commitment to sustainability can be found on our Sustainability with NBS webpage. This page also includes links to our sustainability webinars and articles, including The three pillars of sustainability, which provides an overarching view of how sustainability is assessed. Also of benefit is an article on the importance of specification, especially in the digital age.
The Construction Information Service
CIS is a comprehensive online collection of industry-relevant publications from around 500 publishers. NBS users with a CIS subscription can use embedded links across specifications platforms to access research and reference documents. The content is fully searchable, intelligently classified and continuously updated, and there is a generous amount of sustainability content that can be searched and referenced.
