I help housing associations, local authorities, and estate-holding institutions like universities, to navigate the evolving realities of building sustainability.
There is an array of targets, frameworks and regulations, which now exist in a changing context. Increasing construction costs pose viability challenges to capital projects, while a rapidly changing climate calls for resilient buildings.
I do not provide technical energy modelling or count credits for particular frameworks. I provide independent, board-level advisory, to help you set strategic sustainability priorities, that you can use to allocate capital and manage risk.
Whether you’ve got existing building stock, or you’re looking to build, I can help understand how these issues affect your buildings, and help you set the brief, to get you a building which performs well in terms of energy, sustainability, cost and safety.
Core Advisory Services
1. Client Advisory & Decision Support
Independent Strategic Guidance for Estates Teams & Boards
Brief Writing & Problem Definition: Translating complex estate issues—such as excessive energy bills, overheating, or damp—into clear, performance-led strategic briefs before appointing engineers, architects, or contractors.
Tender & Competition Evaluation: Independently assessing sustainability claims, contractor tenders, and competition entries to filter out greenwash, unrealistic claims as to building performance, or hidden operational risks.
Design Reviews: Interrogating early-stage proposals submitted by design teams or contractors to help judge how buildings would be likely to perform in terms of energy use, occupant comfort, robustness, and sustainability, before capital is committed.
2. Universities, Civic Institutions & Public Estates
Holistic Decarbonisation & Climate Adaptation
Reviewing & Aligning Net Zero Commitments: Objective evaluation of existing Net Zero roadmaps—assessing progress to date, reviewing boundary assumptions, and refining goals to reflect emerging industry best practice, current grid economics, and defensible operational frameworks.
Overheating & Climate Risk Strategy: For estates facing summer overheating or rising cooling demand, we establish effective spatial and technical strategies to improve comfort and reduce energy use.
Historic & Listed Building Feasibility: We can develop strategies to decarbonise buildings while protecting your institution’s built heritage.
3. Housing Associations & Social Landlords
Robust Solutions To Protect Residents and the Climate
EPC Targets & Healthy Homes: EPCs are a blunt instrument, which generate generic recommendations, which often risk causing damp and mould problems. I can help you with a strategic evaluation of housing stock retrofit, considering the balance of fabric improvement and technologies like heat pumps.
Mould & Moisture Risk Strategy: I can help you break free of the cycle of tenants and landlords blaming each other for mould, by recommending strategies that really work to eliminate it.
Retrofit vs. Rebuild & Estate Rationalization: Architectural spatial evaluation testing whether aging housing stock should be retained, adapted, or replaced. See our Layout Services for details of how we can assess site capacity.
Strategic Perspective: Performance Over Compliance
Drawing on years of practice, Passivhaus principles, and deep industry research co-hosting the Architects' Journal Climate Champions podcast, our advisory is grounded in three core strategic principles:
Pillar 1: The Regs Don’t Work
Meeting the building regulations does not mean that a building will perform well. They are slow to adapt to new knowledge and a changing climate.
Standard compliance models often mask huge gaps in real world energy use. Basic Part F ventilation requirements are insufficient to control moisture risk, and even the new Part O rules are not preventing overheating homes.
Pillar 2: Critical Evaluation of Sustainability Frameworks
There as an array of frameworks for building performance and sustainability, that go beyond the regulatory backstops: Passivhaus, BREEAM, Nabers, LETI, RIBA 2030, and the Living Building Challenge. These can be valuable tools, but each is based around a set of assumptions which you may not share.
For example the German Passivhaus standard requires a level of construction quality which is rare in the UK. Net Zero frameworks assume that residual emissions can be offset, although the offsetting schemes are looking increasingly dubious.
We help boards use these frameworks strategically, to get an estate that performs well, without tying you into inappropriate rules.
Pillar 3: Balancing Operational and Embodied Impacts
The sustainability focus in the UK has traditionally been on reducing building heat demand with insulation. However for existing buildings, retrofit insulation poses moisture risks and viability challenges.
But as the electricity grid decarbonises and heat pump technology matures, heating can be lower carbon, so the balance of priorities for decarbonising is changing.
And with these lower operational emissions, the embodied impacts from building materials becomes more salient.
We can help you move beyond outdated assumptions to see how your buildings fit in the broader picture.
RESEARCH & CLIMATE CONVERSATIONS
Drawing on extensive research and interviews conducted as co-host of the Architects' Journal Climate Champions Podcast alongside Hattie Hartman.