Insights

The reality is this: our buildings are full of surplus energy. We just waste most of it. How do we stop wasting the energy we already have? In our recent podcast episode, we spoke with Nicolas Kastbjerg, CEO of Energy Machines, about a different way of thinking about building energy systems. One where buildings are not just consumers of energy, but active participants in the energy system itself. Or put simply: Buildings as energy machines.

Walk onto almost any construction site today and you’ll find the same paradox. Projects worth tens or hundreds of millions are being delivered with cutting-edge design tools, advanced materials, and increasingly strict sustainability targets. Yet when it comes to documenting what actually happens on site, many teams still fall back on the same tools they’ve used for decades. Spreadsheets. Emails. Folders full of PDFs. And hours upon hours of manual data entry.

Cost and carbon are measured in two different worlds. Clients want lower carbon. But decisions are based on cost. Not because they don’t care. Not because they lack ambition. But because the information rarely arrives aligned. At KOSMOS, we align cost and carbon. This leads to confident, fast, and fact-based decision-making on our projects. In today’s new podcast episode Elia and Anders (from KOSMOS) discuss how you can align cost and carbon on your projects – using an integrated digital quantity surveying approach.

7 out of 9 planetary boundaries have already been crossed. Planetary boundaries introduce something systemic. They redefine the limits within which humanity, and therefore our industry can safely operate. In our latest episode of Inventing Construction, we sat down with Karl-Martin, senior advisor in architecture, strategic planning and innovation, to explore a difficult but necessary idea: What if planetary boundaries are not just an environmental framework, but the new building code of Earth?

If you read the headlines, you might think data centres are the problem. They use energy. They take up space. They create “just a few jobs.” They’re described as grey, windowless boxes that quietly sit in industrial zones, consuming power and giving little back. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: If you switched them off tomorrow, modern society would end.