June 12, 2015
‘Trailblazing’ firm wins Gold Award for sustainable buildings
Environmental engineers Max Fordham have been named Gold Award winners in the 2015 Ashden Awards which champion sustainable buildings. The firm, which was the recipient of the Ashden Award for Sustainable Buildings, works with architects to minimise the energy requirements of new buildings. This results in buildings that can meet many of their own lighting, heating and air conditioning needs through measures such as harnessing natural light and ventilation. Its work on new buildings – such as the Hive [pictured] can cut carbon emissions by up to 50 percent. Demand Logic, a clean tech company that helps large buildings make big savings on their energy bills, won the 2015 Impax Ashden Award for Energy Innovation for a cloud-based system which plugs into the management system of commercial buildings and detects what it calls ‘energy insanities’ where, for example, energy sapping systems such as boilers are left on when not needed.
June 3, 2015
Help us to investigate the psychological components of workplace noise
by Nigel Oseland • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design
I recently reviewed over one hundred papers on the impact of noise on workplace satisfaction and found that on average sound level only accounts for 25 percent of effects. By contrast, more than half of the effect is due to psychological factors such as context and attitude, perceived control and predictability and personality type. Noise is a psychophysical phenomenon and as long as we continue to focus on physical metrics and disregard the psychological component, we will never resolve the biggest and often ignored problem of noise in the workplace. The review (available to download for free here) was the first step in revisiting how we tackle the issue. The second step is an on-line survey to explore the relationship between personality and noise distraction. I’d like to invite you to contribute to this research and participate in this survey by clicking here.
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