Turning the tide against business as usual: UKGBC’s Systems Change programme

UKGBC addresses the barriers to radical transformation in the UK built environment and how they will be addressed in our new programme: A Sustainable Built Environment through Systems Change.
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Since its inception, UKGBC has been working to radically transform the sustainability of the built environment by transforming the way it is planned, designed, constructed, maintained, repurposed and operated.  Over 15 years on, our mission remains central to everything we do. As the decade of action closes in, staying within 1.5 degrees of warming moves further out of reach and the existential threat to humanity becomes reality for many across the globe. Business as usual is no longer defensible. 

Our industry is making strides forward, and the ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change is within our power. So why aren’t we moving as far and fast enough? What is preventing the transformational change we need to see?  

‘People don’t wake up thinking I want to destroy the planet today’, so how do we enable stakeholders to create something together and move from this sense of frustration to empowerment and collective action?  

Barriers to change

Through our portfolio of Leadership Programmes, UKGBC has collaborated with built environment leaders across the value chain to explore what radical transformation looks like at personal, business and sector levels. 

Over the last few years in particular, we have seen recurring issues, barriers and challenges with built environment professionals from all disciplines being frustrated with not being able to resolve them alone. 

We repeatedly hear ‘clients are not interested’, ‘there is a real tension between growth and returns and sustainability’, ‘we have inadequate regulation’, ‘we don’t want to be ahead of the pack’, ‘we need a price on carbon’, ‘finding suppliers and sub-contractors who will re-use and find renewable materials within the lead time of projects is impossible’, ‘we talk about zero waste, the reality is different’, ‘ we still think in terms of new rather than retrofit’, ‘ our core business managers are too busy to take this on’, ‘we don’t do nearly enough collaboration across the value chain’, ‘silo working makes more profit for us individually’, ‘we have the net zero targets, delivery is another matter’…

Sound familiar? 

The levers of change

The call to action is resounding across our membership. Addressing the day-to-day issues is not sufficient. These are complex problems that we face, that cannot be solved by small and incremental change. We must look deeper and wider at the root causes and systemic threads to understand how we can move the dial and enable urgent and widespread action. 

We don’t claim to know all the answers. What we do know is that business and political leadership of the past is not fit for the future, we know that we as businesses still reinforce linear thinking and short term focus, and we know systems are not set up to change. Drawing on the expertise of Systems Change collaborators from across the globe and varying industries, alongside the experiences of a diverse range of participants, UKGBC’s A Built Environment through Systems Change programme aims to unpack our thinking collectively and understand the levers of change that will enable sustained and effective climate action. 

As systems expert and UKGBC collaborator Megan Seneque said ‘People don’t wake up thinking I want to destroy the planet today’, so how do we enable stakeholders to create something together and move from this sense of frustration to empowerment and collective action?  

This programme is designed to to be a reflective, dialogical, and exploratory journey. We will live, feel and prototype. We will visualise and make tangible, we will work within a wider conversation of players and thinkers and set up ‘fractals’ to work on sub-sets and challenges identified. Those fractals will define for themselves what they need to learn, what insights they need and synergies they find. It will be a collective and inclusive process in which we aim to bring a wider range of diverse, some so far unheard, voices into the conversation. The process will be based on lived experience, collaborative work and uncovering new insights and different world views and perspectives.  

Business leaders say business success and delivery is all about their people; it is through people, our connection to what matters and to each other which gets to the heart of the sustainability leadership needed for the future. 

We need to talk more about how people are ignited to the overall climate and ecological crisis at this most crucial moment of our time and the emerging dissonance with business as usual and repeated reasons why it is too difficult to make change. 

This programme aims to ignite, build connections and collective energy and understanding through conversation and dialogue. We invite you to join the conversation with us, as observer, participant, contributor or supporter. 

Be the change

Sign up to learn more at the UKGBC’s Systems Change programme kick-off event on 27th September, and join us for the Systems Change Conference on the 16-17th October in Central London. 

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