Join Workplace Futures Group (WFG) as we delve into the transformative journey towards sustainability and social responsibility, anchored by the principles of B Corp certification. This engaging session will feature actionable insights and real-world case studies that highlight the challenges, triumphs, and innovative approaches driving meaningful change in workplace design and operations.

Matt will explore the group’s sustainability strategy and its ripple effect on creating impactful, future-ready workplaces. Juliet and Tim will share insights from award-winning projects such as The Waterman and Alchemy Asset Management—illustrating how recycling, refurbishment, and collaborative funding platforms like Action Funder and Q Flow can reshape our impact on the environment.

Learn how B Corp certification serves as a catalyst for aligning purpose with profit through initiatives like Correx Recycling, and partnerships with charities such as London Air Ambulance, and leave inspired and equipped to take your first or next step toward sustainable leadership in your own organisation.

Hear from heritage and design experts as they share the story of the Brighton Dome Corn Exchange, a Grade I listed building transformed into a vibrant, sustainable cultural hub. Recognised with a prestigious 2024 Structural Award from the IStructE, this remarkable project showcases how innovation, collaboration, and a commitment to sustainability can add holistic value to historic buildings. Learn how the team navigated the complexities of modernising a 200-year-old venue while preserving its heritage, delivering a socially impactful and environmentally conscious space that sets a benchmark for future projects.

How can the much-heralded UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard be used as a tool to transform your existing buildings and retrofit schemes? This panel features technical team members behind the Standard, as well as industry leaders applying it to real-world retrofit projects during its pilot phase.

Discover practical insights, challenges, and successes as we prepare for the Standard’s Version 1 launch in late 2025, and inspire your journey toward net-zero retrofits.

GPE’s 30 Duke Street St James’s (formerly 180 Piccadilly) raises the bar for circular economy applications as London’s largest steel reuse project. The project is a striking eight-storey development where the majority of the structural frame is repurposed from another donor building.

But it’s not just about steel. The project embraces material reuse beyond the frame, with its façade partially constructed from existing Portland stone, further reducing embodied carbon. 30 Duke Street St James’s is targeting BREEAM ‘Outstanding’, WELL Platinum and NABERS UK 5-star.

Join the project team panel discussion to explore:

SKArating is a sustainability assessment methodology that measures the environmental impact of commercial fit-outs and refurbishments. The methodology integrates good practice performance into daily project delivery, and moves the whole interior fit-out industry forward in a synchronised way. The approach provides a consistent system of measurement and benchmarking against good industry practice.

SKArating was originally established in 2008, and has been undergoing a quiet metamorphosis - with new ownership, updated schemes and new offerings in the pipeline. The proposed changes are intended to reshape sustainability in the interior fit-out world to respond to an increasingly climate-aware fit-out industry with alignment to Net Zero, to be inclusive of full life-cycle thinking that delivers against client needs and to expand the sectors and countries that SKArating can be used in. 

This panel discussion includes clients, designers, board members, who use SKArating for a broad, honest and honest discussion, of the need and potential for such ratings in the interior fit-out industry.

The Principles for Responsible Timber Construction set out a clear, ambitious, and achievable framework to build trust, align policies, and drive investment in sustainable timber construction — for the future of both forests and cities. This framework not only advances environmental goals but also ensures that the transition to sustainable construction is equitable and inclusive, embodying core tenets of a just transition by showing how the shift to low-carbon building also promotes social equity, fair livelihoods, Indigenous rights, and long-term environmental stewardship.

Since COP28, Built by Nature has collaborated with the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership (FCLP), Bauhaus Earth, and other key partners to develop and refine these Principles. They have already been reviewed by governments, industry leaders, and NGOs, with initial feedback showing strong support. The Principles are now shaping the criteria for a new international buildings Prize. This panel will explore the Principles in more detail, examining how the industry can help apply them in real-world projects, and how broader endorsement can drive a just transition across the buildings value chain.

Data centres have seen a massive growth since Covid and in recognition of their importance to economic development have been classified as critical infrastructure by the government. Data centres are involved in almost every human activity and interaction. Located in urban settings, typically in industrial areas, they need access to good fibre networks. On most urban sites this means compact multi-storey buildings, to maximise density and make the business case for the developer client. 

Data centres are also moving away from being an energy greedy neighbours and are poised to become net energy exporters to anticipated heat networks. A data centre can heat thousands of homes and their vertical forms can be a site for urban greening and the delivery of BNG. 

Our expert panel will reveal the opportunities presented by data centres. As this type of building proliferates how do we develop data centres to take advantage from their integration into our cities?

The UK built environment has a high proportion of buildings on the verge of becoming stranded assets as environmental targets tighten. The scale of the challenge to upgrade buildings of this type is huge. How can a project balance both a retrofit led investment and deliver the potential for increased rental values? At 300 Gray’s Inn Road the team have embedded carbon analysis whilst interrogating different options to provide the client with detailed guidance, facilitating an accurate design-making process and a route map to an environmentally and commercially viable scheme.

The UK has some of the highest use of flame retardants, many of which are toxic to health, in the world. Many of these chemicals show up in building materials that you are specifying today. Some manufacturers are taking steps to design out toxic chemicals of concern, but how do you find identify and specify building materials that fundamentally protect, restore, and enhance the health of humans and highly functioning ecosystem?   

Learn about projects leading this market transformation and how to create opportunities for immediate, meaningful actions as we cover: 

The enormity of the problem of pervasive chemicals and the impact to human health and wellness 

The programs and processes available to verify healthy materials 

How to set out key intervention points in the design and construction process to optimise for health outcomes

Improve your own materials palette based on the resources and case studies shared 

Reusing the construction products that arise from refurbishment or demolition offers multiple benefits, such as reduced embodied carbon through the displacement of new products and materials. It also supports self-sufficiency in a sector that imports a significant quantity of materials and products, with added advantages of reducing impacts of material extraction globally, preventing loss of biodiversity and waste emissions.

However, despite there being a reuse potential for a typical building of anything from 10% - 80% (by weight), the reality for most projects is closer to less than 1%. This session will explore the evolving landscape of drivers in the UK and Europe – from new regulation, standards and planning regimes to the use of new digital technologies to drive reuse and the practical implementation of reuse onsite. It will show how collaboration, innovation and demonstration are starting to change the reuse and circularity landscape, but set a challenge to the industry to do more.