The Academic Research Forum aims to increase the knowledge and collaboration across the built environment, by re-igniting our work with academic researchers. Our forums are member-led, and by leveraging the power of UKGBC to bring stakeholders together, our members can work on their key challenges alongside other motivated parties.

About the Forum

Academic research provides invaluable insights and evidence into why and how we can work towards addressing the climate and ecological crises. UKGBC’s Academic Research Forum brings together academic institutions from across its membership to share scientific and social research that can accelerate the transition to a more sustainable built environment.

The purpose of the forum is to:

• Strengthen the links between academia and the built environment industry.
• Ensure that UKGBC’s major programmes and projects are connected with, and supported by, latest academic research in those fields.
• Identify research gaps and challenges in need of addressing to help accelerate the sustainability of the built environment.
• Build a network of, and provide a collaborative space for, researchers and universities passionate about sustainability within the built environment.

Upcoming Academic Research Forums

The Forum is open to UKGBC academia and university members and runs twice a year, online:

1. Academic Research Forum: Climate Resilience – 24th May 12:30 – 13:30.
   This Forum will help inform UKGBC’s Climate Resilience and Nature Programme, specifically, our work towards defining a “Resilience Roadmap” for the UK built environment – a project due to begin in summer 2023.
   
2. Academic Research Forum: Hard to Recycle Materials – 14th November 2023 (10-11:30am)
   This forum aims to enhance our efforts in the Circular Economy by focusing on materials that have proven to be a challenge. The event will foster increased awareness of understanding and methods needed for effectively applying circular economy principles to the specific needs of the Built Environment.

Previous Academic Research Forums

The Academic Research Forum is an evolution of UKGBC’s previously run Universities Research Forum. You can find written summaries of previous Universities Research Forum events below:

• Write-up of the Universities Research Forum on Nature Based Solutions (held in 2017)
• Write-up of the Universities Research Forum on Social Value Measurement (held in 2018)
• Write-up of the Universities Research Forum on Advancing Net Zero (held in 2019)

Get Involved

Learn more about the forum and sign up now by talking to our UKGBC representatives.

Macarena Cárdenas Research and Insights Advisor

macarena.cardenas@ukgbc.org

Emily-Rose Garnett Solutions and Innovation Advisor

emily-rose.garnett@ukgbc.org

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About the Forum

As the Net Zero Solutions Forum takes continues to take shape throughout 2023, it will have four topics as its focus: Organisational Commitments (Race to Zero, World GBC etc), Retrofit, Finance + Value, and Whole Life Carbon implementation.

The forum is founded on the following broad principles:

– Solutions focused: the forum should actively create, promote, and share solutions to delivering net zero carbon buildings at scale.

– Peer-to-peer learning: the forum should encourage the sharing of strategies to help deliver net zero, including organisational net zero commitments.

– Advocate: the forum should use its collective strength to demonstrate leadership on net zero in the construction and property sector

Format of the Forum 

Each event, both online and in-person, will follow the same base structure: 

1. Opening presentation and group discussion 

• A UKGBC member has the opportunity to bring forward either a successful implemented solution or a challenge that they’d like to work on with the forum. 
• 30 minutes to present, go into depth, and have a group wide discussion. 

2. Breakout groups for the four main topics 

• The forum then splits into five groups, one for the four main topics (Commitments, Retrofit, Finance, and WLC implementation), and a “free-for-all” space where members can bring items that don’t fit into the other four. 
• Each group will have a UKGBC member as Chair, who can facilitate and support the consistency of conversation across multiple forum meetings. 

3. Reconvene as an overall group to overview and discuss any topics to work on before the next forum meeting. 

Upcoming meetings and how to get involved  

Forum meetings take place roughly every six weeks, alternating between in-person and online events. In line with our ambition to create a national UKGBC network, our in-person meetings will rotate around several locations: 

Get involved

Learn more about the forum and sign up now by talking to our UKGBC representatives.

Alex Benstead Advancing Net Zero Advisor

Email Alex

Emily Dodkin Project Coordinator: Advancing Net Zero

Email Emily

Advancing Net Zero Partners

Our climate change mitigation work is made possible thanks to the generous support of our Advancing Net Zero Programme Partners

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The Forum is open to any local authority officer that’s currently undertaking home retrofit projects or supporting activities, or planning to in the near future. The purpose is to enable authorities to come together in a supportive environment, to connect and collaborate, share challenges and solutions, and hear from sector leaders.

The Forum will also help guide and create content and resources that can be shared across the sector, with the UKGBC membership and the wider built environment industry.

The Forum consists of a group of local authority officers from across the UK who meet virtually and communicate with each other in between and outside of meetings via a designated LinkedIn group.

If you’re interested in joining or would like any further information on the Forum, please contact emily.kent@ukgbc.org.

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• Create a supportive community of peers to explore shared challenges and solutions to them. 
• Connect Innovative Start-Up members with the wider UKGBC corporate membership, facilitating knowledge sharing and network-building.
• Proactively engage start-ups in UKGBC activities.
• Help profile and scale purpose-driven innovators operating in the built environment.

The Forum is a collaborative and informal space, with meetings held on a quarterly basis open to all UKGBC Innovative Start-Up members. During each Forum meeting we also welcome a select number of individuals from the wider UKGBC membership to partake in a panel discussion and Q&A, to knowledge share with our start-up members.

The direction of the Forum is member-led.  An Advisory Group of  Innovative Start-Up members work alongside UKGBC in-between meetings to ensure relevance of activities and to support planning and preparation.

Innovative Start-Up Forum Advisory Group:

• Gilbert Lennox-King, CEO & Co-Founder, Construction Carbon
• Jade Cohen, Co-Founder, Qualis Flow
• Natasha Boulding, CEO & Co-Founder, Low Carbon Materials

Previous meetings:

• “Meet the Local Authorities” – 10th January 2023. We welcomed Devon County Council, Glasgow City Council, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the West Midlands Combined Authority.
• “Meet the Contractors” – 27th September 2022. We welcomed ISG, Multiplex Construction Europe and Laing O’Rourke as our guest panellists.
• “Meet the Architects” – 13th April 2022. We welcomed Penoyre & Prasad, Orms, Bennetts Associates, and SOM as our guest panellists.
• “Meet the Developers”, 12th January 2022. We welcomed Berkeley Homes, Transport for London, Grosvenor, and JLL as our guest panellists.

Get involved: If you are a UKGBC Innovative Start-Up member wishing to participate in the Forum, please contact innovation@ukgbc.org.

Innovative Start-Up members:  If you would like to apply to become an Innovative Start-Up member, or for more information on this dedicated membership category, please see here. For more information on how we support Innovative Start-Ups, please contact innovation@ukgbc.org.

Reflections on Meetings

UKGBC Innovative Start-Up Forum – What Did We Learn from the Architects?

Qflow’s Jade Cohen reflects on UKGBC’s third Innovative Start-Up Forum, where UKGBC’s architect members shared their experiences working with start-ups and discussed ways this relationship could be improved.

18 May, 2022

Blog

UKGBC Innovative Start-Up Forum – What Did We Learn From The Contractors?

Construction Carbon’s Gilbert Lennox-King reflects on UKGBC’s fourth Innovative Start-Up Forum, where UKGBC’s Contractor members shared their experiences working with start-ups and discussed ways this relationship could be improved.

23 Feb, 2023

Blog

UKGBC Innovative Start-Up Forum – What Did We Learn from the Developers?

Sphera’s Natasha Boulding reflects on UKGBC’s second Innovative Start-Up Forum, where UKGBC’s Developer members shared their experiences working with start-ups and discussed ways this relationship could be improved.

11 Feb, 2022

Blog

Meet Our Innovative Start Ups

Inside Innovation: Thermulon

Rozalie Ryclova, Co-Founder and COO of Thermulon, talks to UKGBC about what they do and what innovation means to them.

22 Nov, 2022

Inside Innovation

Inside Innovation: Biohm

Harry Darkly, Director of Operations at Biohm, talks to UKGBC about what they do and what innovation means to them.

26 Sep, 2022

Climate Change Adaptation Inside Innovation

Inside Innovation: Modulous

Ajay Shah, Head of Sustainability, and Chris Mortensen, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder, of Modulous, speak to UKGBC about what innovation means to them and how they’re helping to build a better built environment.

21 Mar, 2022

Inside Innovation

Inside Innovation: Ecofill

Trevor Gaughan, Founder of Ecofill Technology, talks to UKGBC about what they do and what innovation means to them.

31 Oct, 2022

Health Inside Innovation

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The CE Forum is chaired by UKGBC and is designed to be a confidential space to learn from each other’s experiences, success as well as failure and meets quarterly.  

The CE Forum Working Group is a smaller working group that is member-run. It has been set up to address specific topics that several forum members wish to make further progress on. UKGBC helps scope and set up the working groups and help promote the outputs, while the main work is done by the members of this group. They provide progress updates at the quarterly forum meetings but progress their work outside of the meetings. The fortnightly meetings of this group also serve as sessions to discuss industry news on circular economy and have established a close-knit network of highly experienced industry professionals associated with UKGBC. 

To express interest to participate please email circular@ukgbc.org 

Circular Economy Forum Resources

As part of the forum’s work, they collaborate to create resources that help educate and shine a spotlight on key issues related to circular economy in the built environment.

Circular economy metrics for buildings

Transitioning to a circular economy is key to helping reduce our global resource use and…

Climate Change Mitigation Resource Use Deep Dive

Blogs

Embracing Circular Economy Design principles and interconnected enablers for Sustainability

UKGBC’s Circular Economy forum consider what it means to embrace the circular economy design principles of industry projects.

29 Aug, 2023

Resource Use Blog

Collaboration and Early Engagement to Enable a Circular Economy: Opportunities and Barriers

The Circular Economy forum reflect on the System Enabler: Collaboration and Early Engagement and what…

8 Mar, 2023

Resource Use Blog

The Challenges and Opportunities of Reusing Steel

Roy Fishwick, Managing Director at Cleveland Steel and Tubes discusses challenges of steel reuse based on his experience.

28 Jun, 2022

Resource Use Blog

Reusing steel: how do you know what your second-hand steelwork is going to look like?

Elliottwood’s, Director & Head of Sustainability, Penny Gowler discusses what the second-hand steelwork market could look like moving forward, and what built environment professionals should expect.

9 Jun, 2022

Resource Use Blog

Events

Past event

Circular Steel

In-person event focussing on the current challenges and possible solutions to steel reuse

1 Jul, 2022

Event

In person

Advancing Net Zero Partners

Our climate change mitigation work is made possible thanks to the generous support of our Advancing Net Zero Programme Partners

Circular Economy Forum Partners

The Circular Economy Forum is generously support by our 3 partners who make this industry leading work possible,

Circular Economy

The built environment needs to move away from the linear economy and embrace circularity. This will reduce waste, carbon emissions and our impact on the natural world.

View more

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