I attended FOOTPRINT+ last week, this year wearing two new “hats”. I was representing myself (Propetual) and also EME, a company I am consulting with and helping with their UK Launch. It was great to talk to so many people about both of these things - please reach out if you want to know more1.
For those that don’t know, FOOTPRINT+ is an annual event that brings together industry leaders, innovators, and professionals from the built environment to discuss and explore sustainable development and the future of urban planning.
A big well done to the FOOTPRINT+ team. I know how much of a challenge it is to put on these kind of events and they did an excellent job. Interestingly, the new (London) location generated some mixed feelings. It was great that it is right in the heart of the industry and reduced travel for most, but on the other hand its convenience meant that some people could come and go and were perhaps less ‘present’ for a full day, or two. I think on balance it’s better in London and the constantly busy feeling throughout the event must mean that most came and stayed for long periods.
This piece is a bit of reaction and general thoughts. I’m going to follow up with a couple of more detailed pieces on topics that caught my interest, so look out for them.
There was the usual stuff being talked about such as low carbon design and retrofit. I’m not going to go into specifics of those, but its safe to say there were many great examples on show which demonstrated the thirst for innovation and drive for improvement within the industry.
Talking of innovation, Basil Demeroutis described a challenge he sees as a sort of innovation funnel - it is well funded at the wide top in terms of ideas and early development, but there is a ‘multi-dimensional challenge’ at the narrow base where things such as insurance, risk and resistance to change get in the way of widespread adoption. I thought this was an accurate depiction - how do we widen or open the base of the funnel to allow this innovation to flow more freely into widespread adoption? Basil’s view is that we should be “radically collaborative” and “open source” our approach to projects. I had the pleasure of visiting his Tower Bridge Court project recently and I can vouch that he is doing this with Contractor, Willmott Dixon - getting deep into the supply chain, challenging them, encouraging them and helping them deliver a better solution.
Basil was asked a question - “why would the supply chain innovate if it is not in the contract?” He said people want to innovate, their other projects are boring, and a good client will given them the encouragement (and perhaps a bit of a safe space) to do it. Nice answer and I think it shows that we need bold leadership and a little more risk sharing to unlock the supply chain, encourage them and open up that funnel.
I joined a Roundtable discussion hosted by BuroFour where we discussed leadership qualities, traits, skills and strategies to cultivate change in our industry. Ruth Oats, Keith Davies and Martina Concordia were our excellent chairs. To kick off, Ruth gave a short summary of lessons learned from their Museum of London project, which is now on site. There were many and some might seem obvious, but the key is not just knowing these are good ideas, but actually doing them. Ruth explained how they undertook over £1m of advanced surveys to better understand the buildings and introduced longer design periods - something I believe is crucial in early stages of a project to allow designs the time to think differently, otherwise they just use a cookie-cutter to stay on programme and within their (often very tight) fee. We also heard about reduced risk transfer and smaller packages/contracts to better control and allocate risk. Another favourite of mine is loose-fit design, which I was pleased to hear mentioned - this allowed the design to flex slightly within itself when discoveries are made on site or reused materials are used rather than new.
In terms of the roundtable discussion, I liked the terms “mutual endeavour”, “problem positive approach'“ and “generous and patient leadership”. For me these cover so much, but it boils down to creating the right environment for people and projects to flourish, to explore alternative designs and opportunities, and to find ways to reward this (or perhaps remove penalties for trying and not succeeding).
I also learned about a relatively new part of our industry, where the ecological impact of a material is assessed and quantified. This is basically asking what harm is caused to land and ecosystems in the production of a material or product, with an easy example being mining of raw materials. It’s early days and a sceptic could look at this and think “here’s another thing I’m going to have to consider and weigh up for every decision”. What I learned is we are in the discovery phase, trying to collect data and learn about the impacts - we’re some way off a metric or targets being set, so don’t get too concerned with extra work just yet. The advice was to perhaps try and improve your understanding of this for a couple of materials first.
Another talk I joined was titled Optoppen, which explained a partnership led by Whitby Wood. The premise is that lightweight (timber) roof extensions are an excellent solution to development challenges. It makes sense and they have built a tool to help identify opportunities and quickly generate some design options. For me, the most telling point was actually less about timber, but that the additional floors and value add are able to then pay for the retrofit or refurb (whatever term you wish to use) of the existing lower floors. Development is a tough market and if retrofit of an existing building might not be stacking up for asset owners, these lightweight floors creating additional value (without significant strengthening below) are potentially the unlock required to achieve widespread retrofit of our existing building stock.
On a similar vein, I heard how Simten, BGY, Elliott Wood and Deconstruct UK have achieved a similar development unlock by creating an extra floor within a building. They did this by sliding (jacking) two entire floorplates up the columns - achievable because they were originally trading floors and had generous floor to floor heights. This created enough space to build an extra floor, adding crucial value to the asset. More on this later this year following the jacking process.
On the circular economy, it was great to learn about the reuse of glass and how initiatives led by Saint Gobain are gathering pace. David Entwistle explained that there is a huge amount of waste glass (from buildings) every year, but the recycled content in new glass averages at less than 1% by volume. Saint Gobain have a scheme where they can collect glass cullet (broken glass) from a site and reuse it in their new glass production. The key is avoiding contaminants in the cullet and getting it put into special collection sacks. And the best bit, David doesn’t believe there is a limit to recycled content in glass, so the more we collect the higher recycled content can be in our new glass.
A final note on regenerative design. All I’ll say here is that I liked the comparison to a financial investment. If you don’t “take out more than the interest” then your capital is preserved in perpetuity, and that’s basically the essence of regenerative design. Try to select materials that fit into this philosophy and design a solution so that the energy used for operation is generated on site. I don’t think we are achieving this yet, but its another north star and aspiration to have when briefing your teams and considering stretch goals on certain projects.
Reflecting on the insights and discussions, it's clear that our collective commitment to sustainable development is stronger than ever. If you have thoughts, questions, or insights you'd like to share, please reach out. Together, we can turn these ideas into actions. Thank you once again to the organisers and all the attendees for an incredible two days.
hello@propetual.co.uk , info@excessmaterialsexchange.com