Building Briefs – March 12th

• Eildon tenants set to move into Passivhaus homes

Due to their Passivhaus design, the homes will generally need 90% less energy for heating and hot water than standard buildings.

More people are set to benefit from the savings as well, as an extra 50 homes will be built using greener construction methods across the Borders in a pilot that is being run in partnership with Eildon, Scottish Borders Council, Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) and Glasgow School of Art (MEARU).

Construction costs, time to build, as well as feedback from tenants on their experience of living in the new greener homes, will help determine how homes of the future are built and combat fuel poverty.

All this forms part of Eildon’s strategy of delivering inclusive growth across the Borders.

• Story Scotland helps with Leith river clean-up

As part of its commitment to the communities in which it works, a team from Story Scotland has helped clean up a stretch of the Water of Leith and launched ‘Story Community Days’ to give its staff more opportunity to volunteer.

Story’s team recently spent several weeks refurbishing a bridge on Anderson Place for the City of Edinburgh Council. During the project, which included strengthening and painting the bridge, the work site and area around the bridge was affected by the flooding during Storm Ciara.

Story’s team volunteered to join forces with the Water of Leith Conservation Trust and representatives from the council to carry out a river clean-up on Wednesday.

The clean-up included using a boat and wading into the river around Anderson Bridge to gather litter from inaccessible places, scraping path edges to improve the width of the walkway, removing buddleia from the dock walls, and donating and planting bedding plants.

During the clean-up the team found a message in a bottle. The message, in a milk bottle from Mossgiel Farm organic dairy in Ayshire, contained a passage from The Legends of King Arthur Through the Ages.

In addition to the clean-up, Story has recently introduced ‘Story Community Days’ to give its staff the opportunity to volunteer. The company, which employs more than 700 people across the UK, is encouraging its employees to take time out to volunteer in projects that directly assist community groups, charities and events in ways that provide more significant benefits than monetary donations.

• Civil engineering student presented with prestigious award at Scottish Parliament

A GCU student was presented with a prestigious industry award this week at the Scottish Parliament in recognition of her outstanding performance in the civil engineering sector.

Third year environmental civil engineering student Lucy Brownlee won the Keenan Award for Endeavour in respect of her excellent work during her participation in the Constructionarium programme.

The week-long programme allows students in the built environment field to get ‘hands-on’ construction experience, whilst working together with students from across the country.

Students had the task of building a scale model of an iconic building structure, which helps replicate the process of a real life building project. Lucy’s team were tasked with building the Kingsgate Footbridge, which was designed by Ove Arup in 1967.

Lucy described her week on the project as being “challenging but great fun”.