After another busy year, we wanted to reflect on some of the key highlights of 2022.
Here’s how NBS has helped the construction industry this year and a look ahead at what we’ve got coming up in 2023
1. Sustainability - practicing what we preach
This year, NBS were certified as carbon neutral across greenhouse gas scopes 1, 2 and 3. Through our carbon reduction strategy, which included switching all of our electricity supply to 100% renewable tariffs, implementing a digital first approach to meetings and shifting our platforms to the cloud, NBS also reduced our operational emissions by 56%.
We also received three silver awards as part of the UN’s Climate Neutral Now initiative. The UN grades businesses on their efforts with gold, silver or bronze awards, with silver being a high achievement for the first assessment. In signing up to the UN CNN initiative, NBS have pledged to measure, reduce, report and contribute (offset) with respect to its greenhouse gas emissions.
Our sustainable specification guides were launched to educate specifiers on different aspects of sustainability, with the aim of making specifying for sustainability easier. The information provided in the guides aligns with the UN’s sustainability goals and provides guidance to help specifiers make more informed decisions as part of their projects.
We’ll be continuing to build on the work we’ve done this year into 2023 and beyond through the development of our products and services to help our customers design and build a more sustainable environment. Find out more here.
2. Industry-leading research
2022 saw the publication of a number of reports that shed light on the key issues facing the construction industry. Our Sustainable Futures Report proved to be our most popular research report yet, with over 4,000 downloads.
The report provides valuable insight for all construction professionals, from designers or consultants to construction product manufacturers. It explores what sustainability means to the industry, monitors current behaviour and looks at the barriers to achieving sustainability in the built environment. You can also hear about the key findings in this webinar, featuring a panel of industry and sustainability experts.
Other pieces of research from the past year include the Digital Construction Report 2021, the Construction Manufacturers’ Marketing Report and the RIBA CPD Report ‘The changing landscape of CPD’.
3. Enhancing manufacturer product data
NBS Source (our manufacturer product platform) and NBS Chorus (our cloud-based specification platform) are fully integrated, meaning that specifiers can choose from over 28,000 products and add them directly to their specifications in Chorus using the ‘Add to spec’ button.
A new product verification feature has been introduced, which allows specifiers to see how recently a product’s data in Source has been reviewed and verified by a manufacturer – giving confidence that all of the data is accurate and up to date.
4. New NBS Chorus options and content
We continually improve the NBS Chorus platform with new features and packages, so it meets the needs of the industry and enables you to tailor your subscription to suit your projects.
NBS Chorus Preliminaries is a cost-effective package created specifically for consultancies that write preliminaries. It includes the preliminary specification content for the most commonly used contracts from leading publishers such as JCT and NEC and can help organizations to reduce the risk of disputes, improve collaboration and share knowledge.
NBS Chorus Designer is a new package created for organizations that want to coordinate the design model with the specification but don’t need all users to edit or write specification content. It’s perfect for design teams viewing and annotating NBS specifications within their own modelling environment.
5. Webinars
Our webinars – which also count towards your RIBA CPD points total – have reached over 18 000 people this year and have covered everything from new product features to key industry topics and everything in-between.
Here are some of our most popular webinars from 2022:
• Construction Game Changers: Modern Methods of Construction.
• NBS Chorus Masterclass: How to create robust specifications.
• How to specify products more easily.
• Integrating the model and specification with NBS Chorus.
• Using NBS Chorus for Retrofit Projects.
Are you looking to brush up on a particular subject? Visit our events page to find more of our webinars that are available on demand.
6. Our customers
Our customers have used Chorus and Source to produce some amazing projects this year. This case study looks at how award-winning practice KSS collaborated with NBS partners, SpecStudio, on a major sports stadium project.
"Years ago, using notes on drawings meant that there were far too many grey areas which would ultimately lead to mistakes happening. Using NBS Chorus helps to create a clear and concise digital project record, which reduces the risk of information being missed or misunderstood."
We also caught up with flat roof waterproofing systems manufacturer Bauder to find out how it collaborates with specifiers on specifications directly in NBS Chorus.
Visit our case studies page to discover more customer success stories.
7. Awards
Our work throughout the year has seen us nominated for a number of awards.
For our sustainability efforts, we won the Carbon Footprint Performance of the Year category at the ESG Awards. Judges called our ‘Practise what we preach’ campaign ‘An important piece of leadership within the construction sector’.
We were also shortlisted as a finalist for the ‘Sustainability in Tech’ category at the Dynamite Awards, and at this year’s Construction Marketing Awards, we were shortlisted in the ‘Best Digital Campaign’ and ‘Best Use of Content Marketing’ categories thanks to our industry reports, webinar programme and articles.
8. Our partners
We’ve continued to build and strengthen our partnerships with other organizations across the construction industry to provide a wealth of information, content and resources, providing support throughout the different stages of a building project.
Our partnership with the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) has been renewed until 2023, following another successful year of working together, which has included content covering best practice specification writing and webinars on key topics such as information management and sustainability.
Construction and development group Bowmer + Kirkland became our first ‘contractor partner’. Innovative functionality developed by NBS on its Chorus platform will allow design managers to better collaborate with their design partners and manufacturer supply chain, speeding up the design process and reducing defects in construction.
James Vaux-Anderson, Framework Delivery Director, said:
"We’ve seen continuous improvement from Chorus in terms of functionality around masters, collaboration, manufacturer content, licence options and publishing. Discussing required additional functionality with NBS to make it really work for our design managers has now given us the confidence to recommend that this is our process for future projects. This approach has benefits on an individual project level, but also aligns with our greater vision, to build a rich set of searchable ‘big-data’ across all of our projects."
We’ve also continued to work with the Green Roofing Organisation (GRO) and Quiet Mark, amongst other industry bodies, to help support both manufacturers and specifiers throughout the year.
Visit our partnerships page to find a full list of our industry partners.
9. 2023, we’re coming for you!
2023 is set to be another exciting year at NBS. To find out more about the year ahead, sign up for our webinar ‘How NBS can help you in 2023’.
Enjoy the festivities and see you in the new year!
