Utilities infrastructure
A carefully considered and fully integrated utilities strategy is essential to a successful and sustainable masterplan. Our team of specialised engineers and energy consultants is experienced in developing agile utilities strategies for large and complex sites, and helping to reduce cost and programme risks.
About utilities infrastructure
Working closely with our mechanical, electrical and public health (MEP) engineers and strategic sustainability consultants, our specialist utilities engineers are adept at quickly developing, from the earliest project stages, a comprehensive understanding of a site’s energy, MEP, and sustainability strategies. This understanding allows us to rapidly respond to project updates and design changes, particularly in relation to the phasing and energy strategies that are often the most volatile elements of a masterplan.
Fully integrated with the wider design team, we can move both quickly and flexibly. Our utilities strategies are agile and adaptable to future changes in energy provision – especially the electrification of heat and the associated complex expansion of the UK’s electrical infrastructure. Underpinning our approach is our thorough understanding of mechanical and electrical engineering: just as in buildings, we ensure that utilities are not oversized and not prohibitively expensive.
We recognise that utilities infrastructure is often a major source of potential risk, especially on complex urban regeneration masterplans. Our integration with the design team and our clear, timely, and effective communication with utility providers all help mitigate that risk. We engage with utilities providers as early as possible – often using our technical understanding to challenge their initial programme, viability, and cost estimates – to help reduce both project risks and project costs.
All services
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All buildings should be comfortable and a pleasure to be in: warm, well-lit, well-ventilated, well-used, and well-loved. Our mechanical and electrical engineering, vertical transportation, acoustics, daylight, and lighting design services can help ensure just that. We maximise passive measures such as natural ventilation and daylighting, seamlessly dovetailing our designs with the building’s own form and architecture to result in simple, low-energy, and low-cost building services.
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In the face of an increasingly urgent climate emergency, it’s crucial that buildings consume as little energy as possible in their operation. Low energy, low carbon, and low operational costs are our watchwords when it comes to designing new buildings or retrofitting existing ones. We help our clients build sustainability goals into masterplans or early-stage feasibility studies, decarbonise existing estates, and optimise how a building performs against its targets for sustainability and user comfort.
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Meeting net zero carbon targets and minimising a building’s impact on the environment means reducing embodied carbon – the carbon tied up in the materials like steel, concrete, and plastic that go into a building’s construction and services design – as much as operational carbon (the carbon a building produces in its heating, cooling, and lighting). We facilitate material reuse with circular economy strategies, steer low embodied carbon design from the earliest project stages with whole life carbon assessments, and offer advice on planning and compliance, all helping to reduce the carbon footprint of construction.