Importance of Solutions and Innovation

A step change in the sector’s environmental and social impact is needed to achieve UKGBC’s vision for a sustainable built environment.

This requires innovation in technology, business models and ways of operating, however currently the our sector is often called out for being slow to innovate.

Alongside the need to innovate and develop solutions at a greater speed and scale, we are aware that many organisations are already demonstrating leadership and exemplary approaches to their work.

Fragmentation within the built environment industry holding back shared knowledge, successes and challenges, preventing the scaling and uptake of solutions needed.

How do we facilitate innovation?

UKGBC is actively seeking to address these issues by:

Sharing knowledge

To increase awareness of best practice solutions and case studies

Facilitating connections

Breaking down silos and enabling a culture of open innovation

Profiling innovators in our industry

Showcasing innovators and solution providers working to enhance sustainability

Nurturing start-ups as they grow

Through our unique Innovative Start-Up membership offer

Solutions Library

Our solutions library highlights practical and commercial ways to address common sustainability challenges in the built environment.

Case Study Library

Our Case Study Library contains built studies demonstrating exemplary practice and key learnings across one or more of our impact areas.

Innovation research

We are undertaking research to understand the innovation activities of our membership & identify opportunities through interviews.

Industry Challenges

At UKGBC we continually run events, forums and meetings with various members and stakeholders. We are collating an ever-expanding database of key challenges being faced by the industry which are identified through our workstreams. This helps us to understand where solutions are currently lacking, helping us target our research and innovation activites.

We also share and support innovation challenges being run by UKGBC members and collaborators, and proactively help to crowdsource solutions to them.

UKGBC have previously run our own internal innovation challenges and produced associated Innovation Insights Reports.

Innovative Start-Up Membership

UKGBC offers innovative start-up membership that addresses the needs of new, innovative organisations in the sector that are working on solutions to the array of challenges we face on our mission to a sustainable built environment. UKGBC works to raise the profile of and connect the start-ups with one another and with UKGBC’s wider membership through a variety of activities. It also seeks to provide market insight into the property and construction sectors, and the opportunity to learn from and network with different sub-sectors within the built environment.

Encouraging innovative ideas

UKGBC’s Future Leaders Programme, run by our Learning and Leadership Team seeks to convene rising starts from across the industry around key sustainability challenges to develop new ideas.

UKGBC’s Solutions and Innovation team assist in defining challenges for the Future Leaders Programme and profiling the innovative concepts that arise.

We also put forward several of our innovation start-up and investor/accelerator members as speakers throughout the course.

Solutions & Innovation Advisory Group

  • Andy Doyle, Innovation Director, Grosvenor
  • Ankita Dwivedi, Founder & CEO, Firstplanit
  • Arsha Branson, Commercial Director, Sustainable Ventures
  • Catriona Hyland, Research & Investments, A/O PropTech
  • Chloe Goulding, Senior Structural Engineer, Arup
  • Georgina Dowling, Senior Director – Head of Sustainability, Impact Assessment & Social Value, CBRE CBRE
  • Hayley Newman, Associate Director – Sustainability, MAPP
  • Ian Fuller, Head of Sustainability, ISG
  • Jack Wardale, Associate, Undivided Ventures
  • Kingma Ma, Head of UK, PropTech1
  • Matteo Deidda, Senior Sustainability Manager, People & Places, Lloyds Banking Group
  • Oliver Novakovic, Technical and Innovation Group Director, Barratt Developments
  • Phanos Hadjikyriakou, Co-Founder & CEO, 2050 Materials
  • Phil Pearson, Director, Savills
  • Sam Szczurek, Sustainable Innovation Lead, Transport For London
  • Tania Jennings, Principal Domestic Energy Officer, Ealing Council
  • Valentina Shegoyan, Managing Partner, REACH UK

Discover innovation

Related resources

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