News

Incentivising change in our offices.

Many of you will have heard about the Earthshot Prize, which will award five £1M prizes to support ideas that can help repair our planet. Running across 10 years, it aims to provide at least 50 solutions to the world’s greatest environmental problems by 2030.

The initiative looks for ideas to help achieve five goals:

– Protect and restore nature
– Clean our air
– Revive our oceans
– Waste-free world
– Fix our climate

Inspired by this, some of our offices are running their own Earthshot competitions.

Protect and restore nature:

‘Hoare Bee’ by Richard Lightfoot.

A proposal for the Bristol office to keep its own bees on site! Bees are in decline and there is a need to support these vital pollinators, who in turn support our ecosystem. The plan is to:

– Engage local ecologist to understand baseline
– Solitary beehives around the building
– Trips to farms and education around bees
– Honey and by-products for sale in the office

Clean our air:

Home air-quality testing by Emma Rigler.

A proposal for air quality monitors to be made available for our people to have in their homes.

– Allows more of us to learn about air quality in our homes
– Raises the profile of our air quality service
– Improve our people’s home environments
– Helps us upskill and advise clients

Revive our oceans:

‘Cleaner out than in’ by James Harvey and Mike Best.

A proposal to investigate how to reduce water usage in the buildings we work on. The plan is to:

– Research and promote minimising water use within buildings and filtration systems to improve the water quality
– Try to look at buildings as a solution not a problem
– Draw on insight from our public health engineers

Waste-free world:

Modern Methods of Design by Gonzalo Pastor Peñalba.

A proposal to implement Modern Methods of Design and work towards a circular economy; to consider how our work can contribute to a construction industry that is regenerative and resilient.

– Consider the full construction cycle
– Re-evaluate standard size products
– Consider re-use of products
– Consider minimising packaging to site
– Firmwide updating of specifications

Fix our climate:

Net Zero Carbon home refurbishments by Dimitri Harrisis.

A proposal to reassess the way we specify boilers on projects and to help our people understand whether they have the most efficient and environmentally friendly solutions for their own homes.

– 1 in 10 need a boiler replacement
– Is your tariff really NZC?
– Sessions in the office to understand lessons learnt to be applied to our homes and projects
– Test if we can partner with a funder to provide financing for our home refurbishments

“The events were open to everyone and we spent each day exploring a different EarthShot theme, with inspiration and intellect coming together from all teams and people. Following a review of the ideas, we chose the five winners. Look out for updates as each idea is progressed over the coming months!” David Matthews, Bristol Managing Director.