Sustainability champion of the year

Stephen Bell is a very popular man. Particularly with Mother Earth. Thanks to initiatives and actions undertaken by him in the past few years, Staffordshire council has cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 44% compared with 1990. This has prevented 60,000 tonnes of carbon being released into the atmosphere, which is the equivalent of taking 4000 cars off the road. Forever. As if this weren’t enough, Stephen has also worked to reduce emissions of other harmful gases that cause acid rain or attack the human respiratory system. He has even won the first ever national maintenance research award for his work on how best to make his council greener. The council thinks he “probably has few equals” – we say he has none.

Runners up

Christopher Morbitzer, HLM Architects

Not content with developing a software package on sustainability that has been introduced across all of HLM’s projects, Morbitzer has been attempting to forge links with architects in other countries to spread the green word. He has also been doing a fair bit of listening, too, and plans to push HLM’s sustainability group, which he founded and leads, even further in the coming years.

Martin Nunns, project director, Skanska

PFI projects are hard enough without setting yourself groundbreaking targets on waste and energy use. Yet this is precisely what Nunns did as project manager at the Barts and The London Hospitals PFI project in London. He wanted to cut noise and dirt, to use only 100% renewable electricity and to recycle 85% of all waste. These ambitious targets were all achieved and the company is extending his ideas across all of its schemes.

Greg Poole, Skanska Integrated Projects

At 25-years-old Poole is the youngest of our runners-up. If his efforts so far are anything to go by then he should be popping up among these awards for many years to come. In the past 12 months Poole, who is a QS by trade, has chaired the Sustainability Champions Group on the Barts Hospital project, compiled a report that convinced the main Skanska board to buy hybrid vehicles and helped convince the company to review its plasterboard wastage as it lost £175,000 in 10 months. See you next year, Mr Poole.