Articles:

Installing advanced heat sources, such as small modular reactors (SMRs), to replace the coal-fired boilers at existing coal plants will enable the continued use of existing infrastructure for emissions-free electricity generation.. Repurposing coal offers a fast, low-risk, large-scale contribution to decarbonising the world’s power generation as we move into the future..

This will allow people to consider individual planning applications in broader contexts – of sustainability or social mobility, say – or understand the trade-offs and implications inherent in making changes to part of a development.Overall, it will mean the public can form and offer opinions based on rich and contextualised information, rather than on inaccessible and indigestible data and projects in isolation..

In other words, it will allow more people to engage in the right way at the right point in the planning process, accessing the right information and able to give the right kind of opinion.. Further, this will enable a holistic view; the ability to consider planning applications in relation to each other, in terms of design etc.but also in terms of development and other targets, at borough, city, county, or national level..This is about understanding how to take information about one stage of an asset, and make it usable for another stage.

Our approach will generate a density of information that we can make use of throughout the design and build process (including planning) – and then beyond construction, into the operation of buildings and ultimately their end of life.Standardised data will vastly improve transparency and efficiency, and open up opportunities for future innovation..

Enabling planning as a data-led process will unlock the value of related modern methods of construction, enabling connections with related applications such as the PRiSM app for housing.. Making processes more efficient and transparent will force the hand of the regulatory environment – as we have seen in other sectors, better technology drives the modernisation of regulations.. And, of course, the lessons learned from this project can be applied beyond planning.

This sort of project helps create the environment for people – public and professionals – to engage with digital in the public realm.As a result, the UK government is now looking to double down on the current plan to develop construction Platforms and to make things happen even more quickly.

This should send a strong message to the construction industry.This shift is coming.

We've already seen other sectors - entertainment, retail, music - being disrupted over the last 25 years.Rather than resisting the process, the big players of the construction industry need to acknowledge the reality of where we’re heading.