Life Cycle Based Building Design

Nigel discovered how critical it was to use Life Cycle design from inception and how complex the interactions between climate, building type/purpose, client requirements, structure and cost could be. To this end Nigel developed the ENVEST suite of LCA building design tools to work from design inception, in the first 30 minutes of the first design team meeting when the critical first decisions are made and quickly locked in.

ENVEST is unique in providing a complete life cycle environmental impact and $ cost simultaneously from inception of the design process. ENVEST instantly reveals the implications of every design decision, from the up-front decisions about building location, massing, uses, shape, orientation right through to the details of specification of individual elements or components and their likely replacement rates, cleaning and maintenance. ENVEST reveals the complex environmental and cost implications and tradeoffs implicit in every design decision helping design teams to find the sweet spot for getting least environmental impact from any building design whilst also minimising cost to build, own, maintain and operate. ENVEST is the holy grail of building design tools and was being developed for BIM compatibility.  Although ENVEST failed to attract the funding needed to progress from prototype to practical software, Nigel can provide design team assistance using the ENVEST prototype.