Constructing less costs less, but this approach has the potential to yield much more.

The benefits of P-DfMA are showing in many areas of the project, but not least in the installation of M&E building services, in RIBA stage 5..The Forge is designed as open-plan office space, with exposed services and soffit.

It is also designed to be zero carbon in both construction and operation.Our M&E design challenge was to look at the entire office environment and standardise the design of the M&E systems to deliver outstanding performance, while controlling costs and ensuring that the exposed services were aesthetically appealing as well.. Driving value in M&E building services at the Forge.Our solution was to use a small variety of repeatable elements.

Across the entire project, we have minimised the variety of types and sizes of equipment and distribution modules.This is to ensure repeatability, without compromising the performance of the building, both in terms of energy consumption and user comfort.

Doing this allows us to combine efficiency of performance with economies of scale on buying, for example, larger quantities of single gauge of pipe.. For ease of installation, we use pre-wired electrical products wherever possible.

Fan and pipe modules are fabricated off-site, designed for simple connection on site.. We pre-cast a pattern of fixing points into the soffit, so that there would be no drilling into the soffit onsite – avoiding working at height, dirt, noise and the risk of drilling into the steel rebar within the concrete.In the case of the Forge, its landmark status comes as the culmination of many years of thinking and development, and the first embodied proof point of an approach to design and construction that has the potential to transform construction..

In doing so, it delivers a raft of benefits to the built environment and, in particular through significant reductions in embodied and operational carbon, to society more broadly (the construction sector currently accounts for 38% of global carbon emissions)..The terrace (rendering).

The Forge is a development of two nine-storey commercial office buildings, approximately 14,000m2 large, in central London, close to the Tate Modern.It is a collaboration between.