John Sayer Attends FutureBuild2023

John Sayer attended Futurebuild 23 at ExCel London this week. There are some really innovative ideas, products and approaches to design and construction coming through now to challenge the status quo. John has selected a handful of highlights in a post he shared this week.

There are a lot of sustainabilty solutions in development for construction, we just need to get them implemented!

minimass – the team have developed low carbon, low cost, composite beams in a form that puts material only where it’s needed, and uses each material for its inherent strengths. The beams can be precast, or 3D printed, and materials could be swapped out for alternatives too, giving flexibilty to the system.

Seratech Ltd – Obel 2022 prize winners have developed a process that consumes olivine and waste CO₂ from flue gases to produce silica cement replacements for concrete. As the silica comes from a process that captures CO₂ it is “carbon negative” and the concrete can become carbon neutral. Magnesium carbonate is also produced and used to make building blocks and plasterboard.

CELSA GROUP – Constructive discussions on urban mining existing buildings at demolition stages, to grade and catalogue steels for reuse in their existing form. Celsa also propose a credit note system that would allow a direct exchange of steel from demolition stages to be swapped later on for steel in other forms for the proposed development, whether that’s cold rolled, hot rolled or rebar steel, keeping the material’s circular economy directly in the local market.