Industry Services
Industry Services
Trish Andrews
Association for Environment Conscious Building (AECB)
Over the past five years, Trish Andrews and her team have developed e-learning courses on retrofit and low energy buildings to upskill the construction sector and support the shift towards energy efficiency, reduced demand, and healthier buildings.
The challenge for the UK construction industry is to collectively redefine and change our mindset of ‘business as usual’. We are in a climate and energy emergency, and we must all take a stand on evoking change. We already know many of the existing ways to mitigate and adapt for climate change specifically for buildings. Developing long-lasting energy efficiency for new and existing homes and to retrofit is key, as 80-85% of our existing buildings will still be around by 2050.
The recent report on Retrofitting Homes for Net Zero1 by the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero committee, found that there is a need for a rapid transformation of the construction industry and a retrofit skills plan.
A lack of concerted political will on behalf of the past and current UK Government is the major hindrance. Having stop–start initiatives and short-term incentives deters investment and support for rapid change within the industry.
However, despite this we all have a role and an agency in ensuring that we move away from the destructive practices widely used in construction towards more regenerative methods, and this includes retrofit front and centre. From the ground up every homeowner, community, local authority, construction professional and business, can take hold of the reins and focus on implementing real low-carbon rationales for themselves within their homes, projects and business practices.
By employing these criteria, it can allow us to collectively improve our lives, projects and buildings while also reaching low carbon targets.
I believe that low carbon building skills are essential in moving the UK construction sector and our economies towards a zero-carbon future. Through collaboration and partnerships with academic institutions, training bodies and other networks, we can be part of the acceleration towards upskilling the construction industry with the competencies needed for faster transition.
Partnerships are important for scaling up training. One of the ambitions of the AECB is to be seen as a well-respected contributor, facilitator and partner in delivering best practice construction skills to massively increase the uptake of delivering
“The low energy retrofit of buildings is one of the most underappreciated opportunities for the UK to help tackle climate change.”
I qualified as an Architect in 1999, but my passion and moral compass led me on the road to sustainable building long beforehand. The mid 1980’s was a decade that started with a new oil crisis and ended with the international community reaching an agreement for combating the environmental emergency. As a result, the term ‘sustainable development’ became the pivotal phrase that influenced my degree trajectory.
My final degree project was an upcycling community centre which involved retrofitting a disused industrial building. The term ‘retrofit’ wasn’t a clearly defined concept at that time and my tutors thought that to repurpose an existing building, let alone reuse construction materials, was not in fact, ‘architecture’. So, upon completing my degree, I wondered whether architecture really was the profession for me.
That all changed in 1990 when, during my year out, I began working at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) an environmental visitor centre, in mid Wales. I worked with a team designing and building two timber framed cliff railway stations for a water balanced cliff railway. I had the immense pleasure to work alongside two great sustainable architects—the late David Lea and Patrick Borer. Both were experienced in low-energy construction and had an interest in the radical reinterpretation of using traditional and natural materials. The experience was transformational and ignited my passion for gaining hands-on building experience and vastly increased my knowledge of the use of sustainable building materials and their impacts. I became determined to design sustainable building projects moving forward.
I was fortunate enough later, still under their guidance, to work on the Wales Institute for Sustainable Education (WISE) 2010. A RIBA national award winner in 2011. It was the one of the most sustainable buildings, as well as the largest glulam timber framed hempcrete nondomestic building, at that time.
The WISE building houses the Graduate School for the Environment (GSE) and there I helped to develop and run the UK’s first wholly sustainably focussed Part II Masters in Sustainable Architecture in the UK. We taught hands-on building and material practicals and made sure every student’s final design included a sizeable retrofit element combined with a very detailed technical analysis on how the building should perform. This included the rigorous testing of all its potential impacts.
The imperative to create affordable and accessible e-learning training solutions on retrofit, rather than new build, led me to join the AECB in 2020. Here, I have developed – and continuously try to improve on – a range of training programmes under the overarching banner of the AECB CarbonLiteTM Training Centre. The e-learning training material is designed to be scalable across the UK with uptake easily accessible from the householder to construction professionals who want to address the urgent need to improve the performance of UK housing stock in the face of the energy and cost of living crisis and climate change impacts.
A recent opportunity to be involved in the wonderful Tai Ar Y Cyd project7 has been inspiring. This project aims to standardise sustainable timber-based affordable homes across Wales. It sets the AECB new build standard8 as a baseline target. The project has potential to change the way we use timber in low energy social housing across Wales.
Ultimately, the most rewarding aspect of my current role is being involved in a business that is working cooperatively towards change and knowing that every course participant and partner we work with, gains the best practice knowledge and skills to then allow them to use their own agency to change business as usual scenario within the construction industry.
