Pushing the Boundaries Of Sustainability

Ingleton Wood’s sustainability team provide a full range of consultancy support to external clients and internal design teams, providing a truly integrated sustainable service.

Earlier this year, Ingleton Wood’s capacity to push the boundaries of sustainability was highlighted by its work at Stansted Airport’s £11m Technical Skills College. Here, it advised on the construction of the building from conception to completion, enabling it to meet the BREEAM rating of ‘Very Good’.

It’s indicative of Ingleton Wood’s capability to innovate and finetune in the pursuit of ‘greener’ buildings. The company works across a number of sectors delivering multi-disciplinary property and construction consultancy services and its increasing focus on sustainability has now meant it has delivered over 50 fully-accredited BREEAM projects.

For example, Ingleton Wood was appointed for M&E Services and Sustainability for two schemes, including a new build Sixth Form Centre at London’s leading co-educational Catholic Independent School, St Benedicts. Amongst the solutions implemented, the building provides a 40% carbon reduction over the Building Regulations Part L achieved through increased fabric U values (50% better than Part L2B), efficient boilers and LED lamps throughout as well as PV panels on the roof.

Elsewhere, at the University of Essex Innovation Centre, Ingleton Wood used its know-how to help design a solution to enable the building to shed 24kWh of peak solar gain, reducing the need for comfort cooling by natural ventilation. Over the course of the year this reduced total solar gain by 32MWh, equivalent to the average energy consumption of approximately seven UK homes.

Sustainability Consultant Rob Diamond, who has passionately devoted his professional career to developing sustainable buildings over the last 20 years, is rightly very proud of the successes of these projects amongst many others.

“Our service is truly integrated, providing a full range of consultancy support to external clients and internal design teams in order to be at the forefront of cutting-edge sustainable solutions for the built environment,” he says.

Working at every stage of a project, from inception to post-occupancy evaluation and performance monitoring, Ingleton Wood provides detailed analysis with the addition of specialist software to help clients achieve their sustainability goals. Furthermore, the accolade from BREEAM means a building enhances the well-being of the people who occupy it and is a sign that nearby natural resources have been protected.

“We look at the fundamental design of buildings and organisations, allowing the incorporation of sustainable principles and passive design throughout,” adds Rob, who explains that Ingleton Wood, which is accredited to ISO 14001:2015, is licensed to carry out BREEAM assessments and is thoroughly audited to ensure it meets the criteria of the rigorous appraisals.

This is absolutely critical if we are to make significant inroads into our carbon footprint, Rob believes. He continues: “Emissions from the UK’s 25 million homes and two million commercial and public buildings account for 17% of the country’s direct greenhouse gas emissions. If we are to try to limit carbon emissions and avoid catastrophic climate change, we have to focus on our buildings; where we live, work and spend some 90% of our time.”

Having been shortlisted for a number of awards in the last 12 months, including the IEMA Best Team of the Year for in-house environment and sustainability departments that have showcased innovative approaches and strategy, and Sustainability Executive of the Year at the Business Green Leader Awards, Rob and the team at Ingleton Wood are rightly looking forward to further successes in 2020 and beyond.

Editorial: Building, Design and Construction (BDC) Magazine