Royal Observatory of Edinburgh
Pre-Refurbishment Audit
LDN Architects and Max Fordham engineers were engaged by UKRI to help refurbish the Royal Observatory, a landmark building perched above Edinburgh on Blackford Hill. Dating from the late 1890s, the Observatory has been a place of discovery and innovation for over 100 years.
The building itself has undergone piecemeal upgrades in that time, and the scheme now proposed accounts for changing use patterns and needs of the site’s owners and operators.
Eala were engaged to provide a pre-refurbishment audit. Similar to a pre-demolition audit, this is a tabulated schedule of all the materials arising from the refurbishment project. It provides analysis of where those materials are likely to go to once removed from the building under ‘business as usual’ practices, and how this could be improved. The exercise follows the waste hierarchy, looking first at what can be stopped from becoming waste in the first place and remain in the building, followed by what could be reused on the site, then what could be reused nearby, what could go for re-manufacture, and finally what could be recycled.
Our observations during the exercise are detailed in the diagram opposite. It shows the ability to make impacts on the carbon emissions of a construction project as it progresses through the RIBA Work Stages, and when certain exercises should be carried out to give the best chance of making the most significant reductions. This is then mapped against the RICS Whole Life Carbon Assessment stages.