Caroline Gumble reflects on the challenges of delivering a sustainable built environment.
I am writing this after our first-ever Net Zero Built Environment conference, hosted by CIOB head of environmental sustainability Amanda Williams, which I found incredibly inspiring.
In a pleasing coincidence, the event date was Amanda’s anniversary with CIOB – we’ve now had a head of environmental sustainability in post for a year and have been able to accelerate our work to drive a more sustainable built environment. This was also the headline for our event: accelerating towards a net zero built environment.
We were fortunate to have an excellent, international line-up of speakers, including our president Mike Kagioglou FCIOB and our vice-president Saul Humphrey FCIOB (winner of this year’s CIOB Sustainability Award).
There was a lot of great content during the day but Mike Kagioglou’s opening remarks had the biggest impact on me. As readers probably know, Mike has put the UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) “at the heart” of his presidential year and, from the start of his talk, injected a note of urgency, saying that everything
we do must now pass the “climate test” and contribute to a net zero built environment.
He gave a powerful reminder that the challenges in delivering on the SDGs are significant, but also that safety, progress as a society, health and wellbeing, diversity – and much more – are all inextricably linked.
Understanding this and the impact of all that we do is key to moving forward at pace to create a more sustainable built environment.
Working as a modern professional
Mike went on to issue some calls to action, which are worth sharing, and linked them to the CIOB theme of working as a modern professional: modern professionalism is about challenging “siloed ways” of working; we must challenge the traditional routes into professionalism and the old ways of attracting and developing talent; and we must, of course, also challenge old techniques for putting together a building.
Mike’s sign-off was the headline challenge, though, with a call to use the SDGs to drive the culture change that we need to see across the industry and to think about what more each of us can do.
I want to thank all the fantastic speakers we had, as they contributed to a really engaging event on an important issue. Plus I can confirm that we already have plans to run this as an annual event – so watch this space for news from Amanda about next year’s sustainability conference.
Caroline Gumble is chief executive of CIOB.
