A clearer view on the coming months with the bureaux d'études

The Reef
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Hi @reeflings

For those who want to have a clearer view on what’s coming next on the level of the plans and some of the decisions we will need to take.

(@reef-building: correct me if you would have understood things differently)

What are these bureaux d’études / what studies will be done?

The studies that will be done, are related to:

  • Stability

  • Accoustics

  • PEB (energy,…)

  • How to deal with the rain water

  • Calculations of the pipes and cables(sizes, place,…) (ventilation, electricity,…)

  • …

How will they/we work with these bureau d’études?

They will work with the several bureau d’études in parallel.

The architects goal is to get a view on how the buildings will look like, more and more in detail. So they will work in iterations and with every iteration adding a level of detail.

And this is in fact something we have been doing since the start: we started with fixing the outlines of the buildings, than in a second iteration they tried to fit in the various units and common spaces and now we just continue with the following refinement.

The first step to do with the bureau d’études is to fix the walls (inner walls, outside walls ) and floors. This will be done with stability , accoustics and peb (defining how many cm of insulation). This will allow them to completely redraw the plans with the right ‘thickness’ of the walls.

In parallel or in a second step, they will also start up the discussions with the special techniques. These guys (or girls) will calculate the necessary place needed for the technical space, will calculate the size needed of the technical shaft in each unit (the orange squares now foreseen on the plans).
This step will fix the plans (‘plan et coupe’)

What questions can we expect for us to answer

On the level of stability: only one question to answer:

  • Do we go for a ‘timber frame construction’ or a conventional construction?

Most of the questions will need to be answered on the level of the ‘special techniques’. Here are some of them:

  • heath pumps:

    • which type.

    • individual ones or grouped?

  • ventilation: individual ones or grouped/common?

  • recuperating heat from the used waters?

  • water infiltration / recuperation of the rain water?

  • solar panels

    • Only photovoltaique or also thermique?

    • Do we stick to the minimal number of solar pannels we need to reach the necessary peb level, or do we want more?

    • What do we do with the electricity/energy coming from the pannels: do we inject on individual counters or common counters?

  • …

On the level of the acoustics

  • Which accoustic level we want to obtain in the common spaces?

One extra remark: the decisions to take are all situated on the ‘common level’. Decisions purely related to your unit, will be tackled later.

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Thanks for this. Except acoustics, everything is tied to sustainability, so I imagine getting quotes from the bureaux, checking with the facilitators, and making the decision.

All these decisions have financial implications, so we will need to have a rule like this: if it stays within the budget, it can be made in the coordination circle.

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@reef-building @alberto @RichardB @lee (aka helping circle sustainability )

I more or less agree with Alberto, but for me it’s not clear any more what goes to TB and what to the helping circle. They are closely linked (Is the choice to have individual ventilation systems or grouped ones , a sustainability question? To obtain a certain level of accoustics we could choose for a more sustainable material: is this a TB question?)

We should soon see what dates would work for us, for the meetings with the bureaux d’études (and i expect the architects might contact TB next week about this). So I would like to have clarity on the above question.

In the meeting about the planning, the architects mentionned that it is best to have 2 people of the reef being present in the meetings with the bureaux d’études, and these 2 people being the same 2 people for all meetings. (I don’t know if this will be online meetings, I think i would prefer not). So this probably narrows down the possibilities drastically

And a second urgent thing is to clear out this budget. Is this for the helping circle to define or for team finance?

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I know, this is the main issue on the table right now.

In October, I proposed this: dissolve both Team Build and Team Fin. Replace them with a coordination circle made up by the people in the board of Coral Reef. Everyone else in Teams Build and Fin stays on as a “talent pool” to execute tasks.

The coordination circle is mostly a taskmaster: prioritizes tasks and assigns them to people. This is how Ugné has been running Team Fin: we have few meetings, and all the meetings ever do is agree on to-do lists, then people volunteer for the various tasks and go off to execute.

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I said that I will come up with a proposal on a review of our governance model, and I am to do that at the plenary meeting of the 25th of January. I’m hoping to put a draft online in the next coming days.

I don’t think we can clear this out sooner than that, so I would prefer to put all related questions to some sort of “backlog list” without investing too much in them this week. Would that work?