The new Galashiels Community Campus is a new facility with associated hard and soft landscaping, covered tennis facility, plant housings and refuse stores, external sports provisions, improvement of the surrounding parkland and car parking facilities at the site of the existing Galashiels Academy. The overall aim of the Galashiels Community Campus is to embed demand reduction through passive design, whole life carbon and a healthy indoor environment within the design proposals. The proposals consider both design and operation and sit comfortably within the future era of clean electricity and a removal of fossil fuels in Scotland.

Jmarchitects are working with Morrison Construction and the project design team to calculate embodied carbon on the new Galashiels Community Campus project. The team are using One Click LCA software to calculate the embodied carbon of all the construction materials within the design. This involves ensuring all the relevant material data is within the project Revit (BIM) file to ensure that an accurate figure is generated. As the design develops and more data is available this figure will be refined at regular intervals. The first step to reducing embodied carbon is understanding how much a design generates and this recording process alone stimulates conversation around options for reduction.

The process of calculating the project’s embodied carbon is a real team effort and requires collaboration between contractor and all members of the design team. It is this collaboration that will drive opportunity for reduction.

Imagery Credit: Cadpeople