Standard aims to verify and audit claims about buildings’ credentials

Related Argent chairman David Partridge has been appointed chair of the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard initiative.

This scheme was set up earlier this year to develop the UK’s first standard for identifying and verifying buildings as net zero carbon and will set out a single, agreed set of performance targets for different asset types.

david partridge

David Partridge has spent more than three decades at Argent

Partridge will chair the initiative’s governance board that will oversee the development, implementation and management of the standard.

It is being developed by several industry organisations including the BRE, Carbon Trust, RIBA, RICS and the UK Green Building Council.

The standard is intended to provide auditing, verification and reporting requirements with claims for net zero carbon needing to be validated based on its data. Initial guidelines on what the standard will look like are expected next year.

Partridge said: “If the real estate industry and built environment is to seriously address its impact on climate change, a universally adopted Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard is absolutely essential.

“This initiative is already backed by all of the leading professional institutions in the sector and my initial main task is to extend its reach to all of the bodies that represent developers, owners, investors, financiers and managers of real estate as well as the contractors and their supply chain, who build it.”

As well as his role at Argent Related, Partridge is a former chairman of UKGBC and sits on the Construct Zero advisory board of the CLC. He joined Argent in 1990, was appointed joint chief executive in 2006 and was managing partner from 2012 until 2018.