Elisabeth Montgomerie, Sustainability Lead for Atkins UK Building Design, shares an honest and educational insight into the journey of the sustainability discipline within the built environment. Her passion to educate and inspire the next generation to take an active role in integrating sustainability into the forefront of the building design process is admirable. Her goal is to help drive achieving 2030 climate goals and ultimately look to improve the world that we live in through the built environment; securing the future of the building services industry.

After a career spanning almost 25 years’ experience working across the UK and Norway in the environment and sustainability landscapes, we were excited to hear what the sustainability discipline within building services looks like from the perspective of a highly reputable Sustainability Lead, discussing the challenges, relevance of, and predictions for the sustainability discipline in 2022-2023.

A year in review

There’s obviously been a lot more focus on sustainability, and we are a lot more involved. There’s more of a perceived value too - people realise that it’s quite literally burning under their feet and we have to act now. We, as sustainability professionals, don’t have to fight to get involved in the design processes now like we used to. People are coming to us and realising that we have the skills that they need which is really encouraging. Earlier involvement is the real change that I’ve particularly noticed.

People’s attitude towards integrating sustainability into processes has changed. There’s always been an understanding of compliance with legislative requirements, but practitioners, in general, and clients especially, want to be more involved. Sustainable design is more widely considered a perceived benefit from both environmental sustainability and health and well-being standpoints. If you have a building that people thrive in and really enjoy working in, they are going to be more productive, less sick, and you generally get a lot more out of your workers, so you save money. It’s a significant return on investment too which is always well received.

I’ve been working for almost 25 years and back then it was very much a question of how can we do the minimum to comply with legislation and regulations. We were seen as a nuisance that increased budget costs and lacked perceived benefits for the stakeholders, but over the last ten years there's been a trend towards higher sustainability ambition because clients want it and tenants want it. We've got more of a seat at the table than ever before.

There are still some projects that believe they don't have the time or money to have higher sustainability ambitions, but that's no longer the norm. More projects are understanding that it has added value and the earlier we get involved, the more impact we can make at no added cost.

Atkins

Since I started at Atkins in April 2022, we have developed a wide network of sustainability Ambassadors within the Architects, Structural Engineers and the Building Services Engineers. We are working to integrate sustainability principles right from the very start across all the disciplines so it’s not just a plaster that you slap on at the end.

I have just completed the UK Green Building Council Change Accelerator Programme which is designed to question how you change your company’s purpose and value with regards to sustainability, and implement the change throughout the organisation. It’s an extremely relevant matter that is needed across the industry. Adapting the practice's mindset is the biggest challenge of all. I think the industry needs to collaborate more instead of all of us sitting on our own little mole hills trying to solve the same problem.

How has the skills gap of the Sustainability and Building Physics disciplines changed over the last year?

The awareness of the skills gap has grown. I don’t think it was there to the right degree previously.

The other challenge with the obvious skills shortage I think involves bridging the gap across other teams within business such as architects. They are usually the ones that are first involved in and have the power to choose who they involve at the very early stages, so the more they know the smoother the whole process will run. There’s a real need to up-skill the other teams and train them to think more inclusively about sustainability and Building Physics at the very front end of design

Why work in sustainability?

There are so many practitioners who are really keen to join and get involved with sustainability, with both a personal and professional interest.

The greater general awareness of sustainability and realisation that what you can do even as a young engineer, makes an impact on improving our planet for future generations. There’s a definite sense of fulfilment with this discipline. An added attraction more recently is the increase in salaries which has attracted a lot of people to sustainability.

There are a lot of university degrees now that combine sustainability with things like Architecture or even building services engineering so the understanding and significance of sustainability is showing up earlier in education. With the cross-over between disciplines continuing later in business, people are almost unable to escape the relevance of sustainability which I only see as a positive.

For businesses that are looking to integrate sustainability further into its operations, I’d say that communication between the disciplines in industry is key. If you don't have that in your business, this should be prioritised along with creating a focal platform for exchanging ideas, technologies and knowledge.

Speaking to an engineer who wants to move into the sustainability world, if you don't have any prior knowledge of sustainability, you need to start with the basic principles. Question if your employer has some training courses or CPD presentations you can use to gain some basic skills. The UK Green Building Council is a good resource, they have a course series covering everything from general sustainability principles through circular economy all the way to social value, health and well-being. If there is a sustainability team or person within the business, contact them and ask to get involved. Gaining experience through projects is the best way because there’s only so much theory you can read; but you need to find a way to actually execute the sustainable solutions on a project.

2023 predictions

Not a single project can ignore sustainability.

sustainability engineers and consultants are important now, but will become even more important going forward, as we get closer to our 2030 and our 2050 targets. Having a dedicated sustainability project lead is essential. Whether it's a pure sustainability person, the lead Architect or maybe a Building Services Engineer, someone on the project needs to be responsible. You need to have a sustainability strategy. You need to have some targets and you need to measure your progression through the design process against those targets and someone needs to be responsible for that, because it's not going to happen by itself.

We're in a recession but I don't think it will have a massive impact on what we're doing within building design and sustainability work. I think the drive will have to continue because the truth is we don't have a choice. We can't just say that we're in a recession now so we can't afford to think about sustainability, because there’s not going to be a planet for future generations unless we do something. The UK and the West are in a much stronger position to implement the required change, so we need to lead the way for the rest of the world.

The momentum that we we've gained over the last year or two will continue and we will get more momentum but not without up-skilling more people. We need every single person within all the disciplines to know about the sustainability principles so that we can implement as early as possible. It will cost a lot less in the long run.

A big difference between the UK market and Norway, I noticed, is the availability of data and significance of building materials considered. In Scandinavia environmental product declarations are a lot more developed. For pretty much every building product that you consider for your project you can see exactly what the embodied carbon is and all the environmental aspects. It’s a lot further ahead than the UK market and would really help make better, more informed decisions with regards to refurb and retrofit which I think is going to grow more over the next 12 months. The current BREEAM UK Retrofit and Refurbishment manual is from 2014, which is too old. So much has happened in those nine years, so I’d like to see some progression with this to help us perform even better but I don’t see it happening without a Government steer.

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