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Embodied carbon analysis.

Worse, because of the way ductwork is made, the extraction actually takes place about 15cm from the floor, which would allow the cold nitrogen to completely miss the extraction and bleed out into the room..So we designed a trench system, covered with a grille, to surround all the critical areas, and we extract the air from the trench.

Any nitrogen is pulled into the trench by the extraction (we’re extracting the air from the whole space through the trench), but also by gravity because it’s heavier than air.It seems almost obvious, but because it was a groundbreaking MEP design , we did comprehensive testing and modelling to make sure it would work, using computational fluid dynamics (a digital way of predicting how air will move through a building).GSK – quite rightly – have a very strong Health and Safety culture, so the testing threshold was incredibly high.

But the system passed, we installed it and it’s working very well.. Also in Stevenage, we worked with GSK on the lab grade water system.They had a very large system, which had been put in 20 years ago.

They wanted to analyse how much of its capacity was used and when, and what its overall condition was.

We did a full review, which showed that because conditions had changed since it was designed, it was massively oversized, and not fit for purpose anymore.They start with just 0.3% of valuable metal by volume and after smelting, it's still a very small quantity of metal, but it’s at a size that they can put it in the back of a truck to be taken to the refinery where the valuable metals are extracted.. Their present refinery was built in 1965, and is in need of replacement.

Our first job was to look at all sorts of options about where they might build a new refinery, from the UK to Europe to Asia.For a number of reasons, the UK was the best option.

Then of course we had to find a suitable location in the UK and masterplan the site.The conclusion we came to was to knock down a series of existing buildings close to the current facility.