Future thinkers: six winners outline their ideas for future proofing the industry

Evie Martin, architectural assistant, BDP

Visualisations of schemes in planning applications or consultations are an important way of showing communities what a scheme would look like when built. However, the people represented in these graphics are often lifted with little thought from existing image libraries and are not an accurate representation of the communities where the scheme is located.

BDP architectural assistant Evie Martin has developed a library of illustrated characters which give a much greater range of characteristics than are normally found in visualisations. The BDP People Library contains more than 100 diverse characters which will eventually be open source, allowing anyone across the industry to use it.

All of the figures have the option to change skin, hair and clothing colour to appropriately represent the project in question. They include people with visible diabetes Libre patches, colostomy bags, type 4a hair as well as headphones that imply a need for sensory reduction. Martin intends this to be an ever-evolving project and says she enjoys receiving suggestions for new characters to design.

A guidance document aiming to prompt designers to consider how to populate their visualisations more thoughtfully has already been open sourced. It aims to bring awareness to the impact of small details within images that can help to portray a sense of appropriate diversity and inclusion.

We really need to put more thought into who we are representing in these images, making them more inclusive, more diverse

Martin, who works in BDP’s Sheffield office, says the idea came from a conversation she had with a director about an image of a hospital scheme where the figures were abstract silhouettes coloured white.

“We started picking it apart and realised that even that image which had no colour on it or even much detail started to tell a story in terms of what was happening in that image,” she says.

“That was the trigger for thinking about the kind of power that all of these images have and thinking about how we really need to put more thought into who we are representing in these images, making them more inclusive, more diverse.”

The conversation made her realise that she was also guilty of throwing characters into visualisations under tight time constraints, focusing more on the angles and positions of the characters than the traits they had.

She says unconscious bias “100%” plays a part in visualisations. “We’re all limited to our own experiences and I don’t think it’s uncommon to naturally fall into that trap of representing what’s familiar to us, as well as just having that library of handy people who might be at the correct angle.

“I wanted to create a kind of guideline for myself initially – and then it became for others – setting guidelines for how to pick that process apart, how you can think about that more strategically and more fairly to make sure that we’re really challenging who we are representing in these images and challenging what stories we want to tell.”

Martin continues: “Thinking about even stereotypical representations of parents, for example, you often just see a woman with a pram, maybe on her own, as opposed to a male couple who have their own child.”

The library and its accompanying guidance have already been deployed for a regeneration project at Castlefield viaduct in Manchester, and it was used as a tool for the women of the world foundation, an organisation that was looking to challenge and improve the representation of women in the construction industry.

Judges’ verdict: What an effective idea and one that challenges us all – love the fact that Evie has worked with Epic games on this – using expert, cutting-edge and relevant technology, the whole library and the fact that it is available to all should allow universal adoption to the benefit of the sector and the PowerPoint presentation, and being walked through it by “Charlie” was compelling and powerful.

BE Change Makers, Built Environment - Smarter Transformation

What do councils do with all of their carbon offset funds? 

BE Changemakers, a group of young construction professionals advocating systems change in the sector, want to see more money spent on community retrofit projects.

The group, which is part of the Glasgow-based Built Environment – Smarter Transformation organisation, are proposing a local retrofit ambassador scheme. This would allow small communities to come together to access funding from local authorities otherwise not accessible for single parties.

Ambassadors would communicate in plain language how locals who want to engage with retrofit works can upskill, allowing knowledge to propagate through a community. “We want to re-engage people with their buildings, better understanding the skills needed to enable a net zero future,” the group says.

Alongside this, they want to introduce a policy allowing volunteers to trade their time to access reduced costs. The “sweat equity” policy has been inspired by self-build schemes such as those pioneered by the architect Walter Segal and aims to stimulate a grassroots movement to upskill a green workforce.

“Communities deserve resilience, rather than redevelopment,” the group says. “In proposing a policy of Community Renaissance, the BE Changemakers want to drive local industry to provide the necessary infrastructure to upskill those people in the futureproofing of their own homes.”

We want to drive local industry to provide the necessary infrastructure to upskill those people in the futureproofing of their own homes

The group is mostly based in Scotland, with a few members in England. They meet every month – sometimes in person, sometimes virtually but mostly a mix of the two. They also hold events two or three times a month, with all of their work being voluntary.

Anna Stoll, the group’s spokesperson, says their idea came about after thinking about how a future which is regenerative would look in terms of communities. “We kept coming back to this idea of what does ‘community’ actually mean and how do we actually look to communities to be the heart of that just transition for the built environment,” she says.

“A lot of that conversation came down to accountability. It’s great when you can have a profitable and economically rewarding system for contractors, but what about communities and the everyday lives of people? How does that all work in circular together?”

Judges’ verdict: A really well thought-out considered idea that taps into the future generation of delivering up essential services: local, collaborative, networked with a big dose of personal responsibility.

The collective idea is compelling and coupled with a secure source of funding to underpin the long-term nature of the retrofit programme – could be delivered at scale. 

Traditionally such sweat equity projects have been small scale, hard to get off the ground and legally complex, often depending on the good will of the local authority. Undertaking a collaborative and collective approach to the NZ retro-fit challenge could create the replicability required for an effective solution. You can imagine neighbours trading time depending on their own skills in life.

Ciara Durkin, senior whole life carbon advisor, Laing O’Rourke  

Material passports have a leading role to play in construction’s march towards net zero. But the process of logging all products in a building can be time-consuming, inefficient and prone to errors.

Materials arriving on site in delivery vans are manually logged by presenting paper invoices to site security, a system which is both slow and risks data being entered inaccurately.

Ciara Durkin’s proposal is to have these invoices electronically read by an app. A senior whole life carbon adviser at Laing O’Rourke, Durkin says this approach would increase efficiency, practicality and accuracy when assembling material passports.

Paper invoices would be scanned using smartphones and text converted into machine-readable data by character recognition software. Algorithms would then extract relevant data, harmonise it into standardised formats and assign a unique reference to each material in the database.

A digital final bill of quantities in a project would be represented by a single QR code physically printed onto a building to allow access to the database. When scanned, it would provide detailed and accurate information to enable decision making that contributes to the circular economy and sustainable reuse of materials.

Durkin worked in sustainability and architecture before moving to Laing O’Rourke, and found that problems which arise during construction become “multiples of multiples”. 

We’ve been seeing is that a BIM model doesn’t really capture probably even 20% of what actually occurs on site

She says: “With large contracts, when they go over £100m, because it’s such a disconnected workstream, and there’s so many players in the market, it means that problems just escalate really quickly.”

Solving these problems is about creating simplicity, Durkin says. It requires a model which everyone can understand and use, and which holds people accountable for the amount of materials they buy for a site.

While material passports have been talked about for years, they were originally intended to be used through BIM models, an approach which Durkin says has shortcomings.

“The biggest thing that we have been seeing is that a BIM model doesn’t really capture probably even 20% of what actually occurs on site, so the best way to understand that is to come up with something that everyone can use, not just specialist digital engineers.”

Durkin’s work at Laing O’Rourke has included writing the standard for the firm’s carbon measurement process. For her work on her material passports idea, she has compared paper invoices of materials arriving on site with BIM models to uncover discrepancies. 

“Follow the money, follow the carbon, was our idea. If it has been paid for on the site, it is somewhere – but a model won’t take that into account.”

Judges’ verdict: This was a very well-presented entry. Concise and well-made points and it was valuable to see the material passport challenges and solutions from the point of view of the contractor working on site

Other Future Thinkers proposals

Rosy Watts, associate director, Turner & Townsend and Alinea 

Watts wants to “put the S in ESG” with greater use of local SMEs in supply chains to provide the communities where a scheme is being built with jobs, and embedding this in procurement processes. She says this would foster a closer connection between the project and locals, helping with planning approvals. It could also make it easier to reuse materials as local firms would have a better knowledge of where they could be used. 

Lia Minty, engineer, Max Fordham

The shift towards working from home during the pandemic has seen office buildings in city centres under-occupied. Minty suggests refurbishing this excess space into places which better meet the demands of the future. This could include mixed-use housing and co-working space buildings that function as systems, using heat generated by workers during the day to heat apartments in the evening.

Rupert Parker, founder and chief executive, Building Passport 

Parker wants to develop material passports to encompass all data for a building, not just its materials but all technical, legal and financial information. This would cover the lifetime of the building from its design and construction through to occupancy and demolition. He says this would help real estate investors by better reflecting building quality and condition, enabling faster and safer transactions.

Elizabeth Magee, development manager, Urban & Civic

The average age of councillors in 2022 was 60, and 42% were over 65. For council planning committees to better represent the communities they serve, Watts says their members should be randomly selected from the electoral register. She proposes that people would be chosen in the same way as juries using council-held data, and it would be a civic duty.

Hugh Franklin, head, AeroBarrierUK

Franklin proposes an app on phones which could answer builders’ questions about how to make schemes sustainable. This would offer a range of potential solutions based on visual information or drawings, encouraging site-specific thinking dependent on local conditions rather than pigeonholing specific solutions.

Adam Dodd, framework management trainee, Willmott Dixon 

Dodd wants to see greater use of two-stage tendering as a route to ensure greater collaboration on projects. Although the process takes longer, he says this would enable everyone to get around the table as early as possible, reducing risk, encouraging innovation and enhancing project quality.

Thomas Griffiths, graduate construction manager, Laing O’Rourke 

Griffiths’ proposal is for teams to share standardised design elements of schemes so they can be taken off a shelf instead of worked up from scratch. He gives the example of a corridor with built-in MEP systems which, once it has been established as a suitable design, could be used again by different teams in any future project.

Wojciech Szewczak, associate, strategic sustainability consulting, Ramboll

Szewczak proposes building regenerative infrastructure which can restore any damage caused during its constructino by aiding a natural recovery of the environment and its natural systems. It would be built or renewed in a net-positive way using existing resources and creating practices, cultures and procesdures with positive environmental and social impact.

Wing Tsang, specialist content creator, Liz Male Consulting

The UK has a total prison population of nearly 90,000 people, a potentially valuable pool of people to help address the industry’s skills shortage. Tsang would like to see more firms attracting prisoners into the industry by offering them training opportunities, jobs and apprenticeships while they are serving their sentences or after release. 

Hannah Carpenter, senior account director, Liz Male Consulting

Carpenter would like to see the creation of an education programme for the entire construction indusntry, including students, to inform people about the Building Safety Act. This would include mandatory CPD for members of construction professional bodies, online resources for others, and changes to curriculum requirements for further education colleges and universities.

Colin Omorodion

Omorodion wants communities to have more involvement in shaping local development projects. He proposes setting aside 5 - 10% of the total funding for urban regeneration projects to be set side for co-investing by communities, giving responsibiltiy for goveranance and risk management to local authorities and letting communities elect a representative to sit on project board meetings throughout the development cycle.

Sam Reeson, principal planner, ACE Emerging Professionals

Reeson proposes increasing diversity in the industry by directing professionals to EDI training at their companies, establishing EDI committees to support equality, diversity and inclusion at the workplace, creating new diverse recruitment guidelines, promoting fresh perspectives on people’s diverse backgrounds and motivating colleagues to showcase their culture and traditions in the workplace to make them feel included.

Gaurav Kataria, building performance and sustainability engineer, Harley Haddow

Instead of separating embodied and operational carbon, Kataria would like to see more of the industry standardising whole life carbon benchmarks. Kataria says this would put a spotlight on holistic design approaches and push stakeholders to seek newer alternative pathways that haven’t been explored previously.