Articles:

It also required us to develop skills that internal-facing teams don’t need.

He was one of the first theorists to develop the idea of the economy of scale.How making things bigger, growing operations tends toward greater economic efficiency.

He was right, in some circumstances.The problem is that such simple rules, although alluring, can be unhelpful or plain wrong in other circumstances..When lecturing my students, I discuss the dis-economy of scale.

How large processes need large peak demands of inputs, how many design factors are not linear so doubling the size of a process can mean 4x or 8x the energy, the time, or the effort.For some processes, a colony of ants would be much more efficient than a brontosaurus..

The point is that scale is a complex but critical issue if you are concerned with multiple factors – profitability, economic agility, sustainability, system reliability.

We cannot just keep doing what we have always done or following over-simplistic thinking.As the information becomes more detailed, the list should be updated to reflect the latest information.

Most issues we come across on a project are due to missing services or undefined duties within the laboratory equipment list.. Labs without extracting equipment can follow the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) guidance for air change rates, with supplementary cooling required from internal units such as fan coil units.For spaces requiring close temperature control, we do not use refrigerant-to- air cooling..

In labs with extracting equipment, especially fume cupboards, the make-up air required may be a very high volume and allow for centralised air cooling.We always review the possibility of variable-volume fume cupboards to reduce the energy demand, whilst being aware that the stack discharge on fume cupboards must remain constant, which means the fans will require a bleed damper to allow make-up air to enter the fan to maintain constant efflux velocity.