by Brianna Crandall — December 27, 2010—BSRIA, the U.K. “built environment experts,” recently announced that the new edition of its popular Rules of Thumb is due for publication in early 2011. The Rules of Thumb guide gathers together the most common rules of thumb for the initial stages of designing a building and its services.
As with BSRIA’s previous guide, it provides extremely useful values to inform the early stages of design, such as project inception and outline briefing, feasibility planning, the assessment of global loads and space requirement. It also enables a grasp of services costs.
The new guide has been updated and includes many improvements including a spiral-bound format to make it easier to use in the office and on-site. New features include:
- the latest manufacturers’ technical information;
- feedback from completed projects;
- up-to-date industry design guidance;
- increased guidance about space and weight allowances, presented in a new graphical format;
- CO2 emissions and energy consumption benchmarks;
- information about renewable technologies; and
- increased guidance about costs, expanded to include maintenance, operation and life cycle information.
The new Rules of Thumb will supersede the previous edition (code BG14/2003).
- feedback from completed projects;
