Indeed, the atrium sets the tone for what is undeniably one of Circle Reading’s key architectural features - space.

For spaces requiring close temperature control, we do not use refrigerant-to- air cooling..In labs with extracting equipment, especially fume cupboards, the make-up air required may be a very high volume and allow for centralised air cooling.

We always review the possibility of variable-volume fume cupboards to reduce the energy demand, whilst being aware that the stack discharge on fume cupboards must remain constant, which means the fans will require a bleed damper to allow make-up air to enter the fan to maintain constant efflux velocity.With any fume extracting system, we will ensure the material of construction throughout the entire system is suitable for the extracted fumes.Solvents and acids are particularly good at corroding metal, such as the metal fixing a fire damper to a wall..

The electrical engineer should review with the client the earthing requirements, including static discharge within the floor construction or electromagnetic interference for sensitive equipment, and inform the lab design architect.Some client laboratory equipment can be damaged or become dangerous if there’s a loss of power, so understanding any Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) requirements early on is essential.. As usual, the coordination between the MEP services becomes the difficult part of the latter stages.

It’s not unusual to have an extremely busy ceiling void, so it is important to start with the drainage and then the ventilation.

We have to bear in mind the coordination below the ceiling too, with dropping services, wall-mounted isolation and panels, shut-off valves and emergency stop buttons, all competing for space on the walls.The Building Safety Bill specifies that information must be held securely on a digital platform, and it’s much more sensible to start doing it now, rather than having to catch up later once it’s all gone through the paper-based planning system.

The importance, value and scalability of digitising these building safety processes will be evident to everyone..Sharing data for a better future.

The possibility of digitising our built environment clearly holds the potential for a wide array of valuable benefits.Miranda Sharp has been working on a demonstrator project focused on information share between utility providers in order to facilitate better decision making.