In securing a better future for today’s buildings, we need to push the standards of best practice or pioneering achievements, while also sharing knowledge and learning together to raise the standards of ‘business-as-usual’.

That was the topic of our third session on ‘Decarbonisation: the future for today’s buildings’, which brought together over 100 clients and industry partners to learn and share their views on one of our industry’s biggest challenges. 

In case you missed our previous write-ups, have a look at:  

• Our first session of the morning, on gathering and using sustainability data in the course of property transactions
• Our case study discussion about Holborn Gardens, a landmark refurbishment for our client Grosvenor

Panel overview: 

For our third panel of the day, we welcomed:  

• Nida Rehman, Senior Development Manager and Head of Development Standards at LGIMRA 
• Jacqui Allen, Head of Built Asset Consultancy at TFT 
• Martin Smith, Director of Project Management at TFT 

Together, they took different approaches to the discussion on continual improvement and knowledge-sharing, from the in-house client perspective to the project team and the consultants’ view.  

As a major investor, with a mantra of ‘inclusive capitalism’, how does L&G approach knowledge-sharing among its development and asset management team?  

Nida kicked off by explaining 3 pillars to strategy for continual improvement.  

First was the importance of understanding the need for both large and smaller interventions, advancements and instances of best practice. For an organisation like L&G, applying each progressive success more widely is a practical way to make real and consistent progress. This is applicable to our industry as a whole: focus not only on high-performing but highly-demanding new developments; and take every opportunity to upgrade existing stock too.  

The second and third pillars both relate to breaking down siloes. Externally, L&G processes like project sign-off gateways and annual team conferences establish continual feedback loops between their project teams; and help share L&G’s vision, culture and objectives. Internally, L&G’s centralised sustainability team provides strategic direction to its asset management and development teams, setting common goals and helping teams to share learnings from one workstream to support others.  

While some clients have systems like these in place, many do not. And as Martin noted, often a project team’s culture will dictate whether or not consistent progress is made against a client’s brief, as some sustainability accreditations are incompatible when you get down to the detail; you need a project team who can review, explain and come up with the best pragmatic response to the site constraints.

TFT supported L&G on its refurbishment of Unit 4, Watchmoor Point, turning a tired warehouse asset into a leading example of a net zero carbon industrial building. The project succeeded by using the philosophy of cumulative improvements and detailed interventions across every aspect of the works. By sharing the learnings of that project more widely, L&G has followed Watchmore Point with a series of projects which build on its success and scale those learnings up into a business-as-usual process.  

It was only fair for Nida to turn the question back to Martin and Jacqui, asking them about TFT's approach to knowledge sharing within its team.  

Jacqui echoed Nida’s points about making cumulative improvements and being proactive about sharing data and bringing teams together under a common goal. As a B Corp, TFT’s services and business operations are directed towards maximum positive impacts, which follows our own trend towards blending sustainability strongly through all our work.  

That might include launching new hybrid services like Green Dilapidations, or applying a more dedicated specialist input to processes like TDD (see session 1). But it also involves challenging clients and inviting pilot studies to try new things, such as engaging clients with a new approach to planned maintenance management, where the industry norm is still to replace products like-for-like with little consideration for decarbonisation and efficiency along the way.  

What would each panellist have you take from the session?  

Nida emphasised the need for regular feedback and communication links between client sustainability and development leads and those technical experts and project delivery teams implementing technology. This joined up communication enables innovations to be rapidly assessed, adopted and rolled out as business as usual on a larger scale. 

Martin encouraged the audience to think big, stand out, and bring in new perspectives to see how ‘boring’ projects can be an opportunity to make progress and do something different you can learn from...

Jacqui wrapped up the session with a call on everybody to rethink standard practice, and understand that every stage of the building lifecycle presents an opportunity for decarbonisation and improvement. 

This is very much the idea behind our conference – finding new ways to unlock progress on decarbonising existing buildings. The challenges remain, but will progress with combined effort and commitment to share knowledge as we go.  

CTA 

If you missed these sessions and would like to know more about any of the topics discussed, please contact info@tftconsultants.com, and we will put you in touch with the right people to continue the conversation.