Coffee at the London Stand this morning was served with a bacon sandwich, a side of sun and a dose of hard hitting statistics. I was catching up with a trio who hit the headlines in the week leading up to Mipim, Craig Sparrow from Skanska, David Glover from Arup and Chris Smith from GE.

For anyone who missed the news, the three firms have formed a partnership to deliver clients with a join green retrofit and rufurb service - something they think needs to be addressed by the industry immediately.

Their message is that the time for talking has been and gone and now, action is required. and fast. “In order to meet the 2050 carbon reduction targets, the industry will need to retrofit one existing building in the UK per second,” said Craig. “The time has come to really get the ball rolling,” added Chris.”
 
The GE/Skanska/Arup threesome, let’s call them Geskankup, are now urging other firms to follow suit in offering this kind of one stop shop to go some way to tackling the problem of retrofitting the 98% of existing building stock in the UK.

They have been busy down here in Cannes scoping out opinion, especially from clients, and the resopnse has been good: “We have had a very strong reaction and enquiries from high end clients with portfolios of projects all the way down,” said David.
 
And they are all quick to quash concerns about extra costs and the need for new technology: “It’s all a myth about costing too much and cliams the technology doesn’t exist,” said Craig. “there is really no debate about what’s required, it’s about better management of equipement post conmstruction with technology that already exisits.

Everything we are doing, we have always done. Just more effectively. It’s not as hard as you would think.”
 
Go Team Geskankup…

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