Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

All the best for 2012 - let's hope it is better than is being predicted!



Birmingham's Transport Strategy

The transformation of New Street Station, Metro extension and plans to ‘transform bus travel’ were just some of the exciting projects discussed at a seminar on Birmingham’s Transport Strategy yesterday.  Lucy Walsh and Penny Taylor attended the event which featured guest speaker Alex Burrows, Head of Strategy at Centro. 

Alex described Centro’s role in shaping the strategic vision of passenger transport and the vital importance of investment in transport infrastructure.

It was refreshing to hear that the projects discussed are imminent and will be on the ground by this time next year, giving Birmingham a much needed boost to its economic and social vitality.

The projects are part of Birmingham’s ‘Big City Plan - Vision for Movement’, published in November 2010.  The plan seeks to ensure ‘people can arrive into and move around the city efficiently within an attractive, safe and welcoming environment.’

To read more about Birmingham City Council’s objectives for movement within the City Centre please follow the link below:

http://bigcityplan.birmingham.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Birmingham-City-Centre-Vision-for-Movement.pdf

Many thanks to WWIC and WiP for organising the event and Shakespeares for providing an excellent venue.

A Few Facts About Us

Here are a few facts about us:-

• We provide an effective and high value service with a focus on achieving  client aspirations. We offer a complete range of skills for landscape architecture and environmental services.
  
• We have proven experience of a very diverse portfolio of work including housing, historic landscapes, renewable energy, schools and colleges, highways, public realm, Suds, waste transfer, canal marinas
  
• We have worked with a diverse range of clients across the public and private sector including community groups, private landowners, developers, local authorities, contractors, Government Agencies, architects and engineers.
  
• No project is too large or small – with a portfolio of schemes ranging in value from a few thousand, to over a hundred million pounds in the case of major infrastructure
  
• We have a track record in landscape design at all stages from inception to implementation of work on site and long term management
  
• We have expertise in Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment for a wide range of projects, including sensitivity and capacity studies
  
• As managers of a long established multidisciplinary team of environmental specialists we are able to provide clients with an effective one stop shop for Environmental Impact Assessment
  
• We are well resourced with experienced qualified staff. Both our Directors have over 30 years experience
  
• Director Barry Moore has given expert evidence at over 25 Public Inquiries


• We are all Landscape Architects, the company is Landscape Institute registered and an IEMA Corporate Assessor


• We have been established for nearly 15 years


• Our website is http://www.moore-environment.co.uk/


• Follow us on twitter @MooreEnv


• Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Moore-Environment


• Anything else - contact us - we are all quite nice as well!

Meerkats

Becoming a Chartered Landscape Architect

For a professional Landscape Architect, gaining chartered status is a key milestone. In her second year of the ‘Pathway to Chartership’, Lucy, a graduate landscape architect who has been with us for 2 years, is in a good position to explain what this means and reflect on her experience.

A Chartered Landscape Architect is required to demonstrate a high level of competency and commitment to Landscape Architecture. The process of becoming Chartered is carried out through the Landscape Institute (LI) and is called the ‘Pathway to Chartership’.

To embark on Pathway you must first be a Licentiate member of the LI.  To do this, your educational experience is taken into consideration and completion of an approved degree course is required. 

It is usual for a Landscape Architect to be working for an LI registered practice when embarking on Pathway as it is a mentored experience completed with the support of a Chartered Landscape Architect.

The structured syllabus is designed to develop the skills a Chartered Landscape Architect needs for their professional life.  Sections of the syllabus include professional conduct; professional duties and liabilities; professional appointment, professional relationships, practice management, the legal system, the planning system, environmental policies, environmental control, contract law and contract administration.
These subjects could be perceived to be ‘dry’ but when applying them to live projects and work in practice they can be fascinating and key to understanding the wider context of our work.

I have found Pathway an excellent stimulus to career progression and a helpful framework to work within.  The process is supportive with regular reviews with an internal mentor and an external Pathway supervisor.  I also attend study sessions with other Pathway candidates which allows us to share knowledge and experience. 

Typically the Pathway takes 2-3 years depending on your previous experience.  I’m approaching the final stage, an oral examination with the LI which confers Chartership status.  I will be required to demonstrate knowledge gained in addition to the skills in management and professional judgement.

The Pathway has opened my eyes to the breadth of knowledge and experience required to become a competent Landscape Architect, I would recommend it to any Landscape Architects who are considering becoming Chartered. 

New BS proposed to Help Protect Young Trees

Nurturing Nature: BS8545 Young Trees: From The Nursery Through To Independence In The Landscape: A Continuous Process

In 2008 the Government published Trees in Towns II – a follow up to the 1992 research on urban trees. Within the document was the statistic that, on average, 25% of young trees planted into the landscape fail. This was perhaps the spark which led to Keith Sacre (Sales Director at Barcham Trees) proposing that a new British Standard should be developed to help protect young trees and emphasise that the transition from the nursery into the landscape is a continuous process.

The scope for the new standard was proposed to The British Standards Institute (BSi) last year and the standard BS 8545 is now under consultation by a BSi committee.

Concentrating on nursery trees from 8-10 cm girth upwards, the standard is envisaged as a comprehensive flow chart beginning with the nursery production system through to independence in the landscape; the purpose being to highlight best practice for any particular methodology or production process. The proposed scope of the standard can be summarised as follows:

SECTION 1: Nursery Methods

• Impartially outline the advantages and disadvantages of current tree nursery production methods, describe best practice and introduce specifiable criteria for each.
• Expand upon specifiable morphological parameters/characteristics currently in use; introduce criteria for a nursery benchmark of tree health.

SECTION 2: Despatch and storage

•  Detail current best practice in despatching and transporting young trees
• Describe pre-transplant storage practices and the impact these have on transplanting success.

SECTION 3: Transplanting

• Identify current best practice and recommendations for transplanting, including support systems, tree pit design, structural soils and other backfill mediums.
• Consider the use of nutrient supplements and mychorrizal inoculations, when, how and of what value such supplements offer in enhancing transplanting success.

 SECTION 4: Post planting maintenance

• Review the use of mulches, post planting watering regimes and the impact of herbicide, competition, grass management and soil compaction.
• Define the use of plant health assessment, measured against a nursery benchmark, to evaluate and identify stresses post transplanting allowing remedial action to be taken early.

SECTION 5: Formative pruning

• Describe the aims and objectives of current best practice of formative pruning and how this relates back to nursery practice.

The proposed standard is to be aimed at all professionals involved in the process of handling young trees from the nursery into the landscape. The first stage in an ongoing consultation process has just been completed by many such professionals and considered why plants might fail. The results, together with future consultations will help inform the BSi committee and hopefully lead to the production of this good practice guidance ensuring that plant failures on schemes are reduced and young trees develop into well-formed, healthy specimens.

The Rise of BIM

The Building Information Modelling Working Party Strategy Paper was released by the Department for Business on the 20th June 2011 and outlines the Government’s strategy for capability in BIM to be a requirement for the procurement and delivery of all future public buildings by 2016.

BIM has increasingly although to varying extents been used by the construction industry for a number of years but the advent of the Government strategy will no doubt hasten its adoption as a more standard way of working across the board. However, the current lack of understanding and agreement as to what BIM actually is and how it should be used makes investing in the required technology and training a risk, but if companies don’t will they get left behind?

Paul Morrell the Government’s Chief Construction Advisor has suggested that small businesses do not need to panic (BIM Webinar June 2011); he has however also stated that companies should “adopt BIM or get betamaxed” (NBS BIM Roundtable Discussion May 2011). Hmmm which is it Mr Morrell?

Perhaps both; the analogy has been made with change-over from hand drawing to CAD in the 1980s/90s. There was both resistance and enthusiasm, whilst some companies were unwilling to adapt and were left behind, conversely there remain (admittedly usually small) companies who have doggedly stuck to hand drawing and have managed to survive. Most companies however adopted CAD, trained up their staff and moved with the times; albeit at varying speeds and using a variety of software. The adoption of the BIM process and technology will no doubt be similar, and perhaps we need to have faith that the industry will continue to use companies for their professional expertise not just their technical capacity.

BIM after all is not simply sophisticated technology, but a method of working, a collaborative process between all members of a project team. Suitable technology is required to enable effective implementation, but BIM is not only defined by drawing files; but by the way the people responsible for those drawing files choose to integrate them and use them.

The power of BIM is undoubtedly phenomenal, at its ultimate it is a single information laden database of all the elements required for a project through its entire lifecycle. At its heart is usually a 3D model which coordinates and visualises all these elements and enables outputs of different dimensions – 2d drawings, 3D visualisations, phase sequencing, cost estimates, carbon impact analysis, management plans – all of which can essentially be simultaneously produced or amended, vastly reducing the time and cost risk of late design changes, conflicts on site or simply producing specifications.

A fully integrated BIM though does raise legal, contractual and insurance issues. Who owns the actual BIM database, who is responsible for what and how can fair usage of data be assured? Some of these issues can be addressed with slight modifications to current collaborative NEC and JCT contracts that employ a shared approach to risk. As with any project the key is to ensure an accurate brief at the outset. Clients as well as suppliers need to be educated in what to expect from the BIM process with the brief reflecting the requirements and outputs for each stage from each consultant.

BIM is here and although it may be constantly reiterated that it is a process and not a tool, tools are required to implement it. Possibly though it may not strictly be necessary to rapidly invest in expensive hardware and software updates; with appropriate protocols and techniques in place, the more commonly used applications could be utilised to BIM standards, for smaller projects at least. However, as with the transfer to CAD, the uptake to dedicated BIM software is inevitable – the decision then becomes which one……