Sep 2

The One With... The Architect That Says the UK Has Lost Its Edge

Andrew Waugh co-founded Waugh Thistleton Architects nearly 30 years ago, straight out of college, and has spent his career pushing bio-based materials and low-carbon construction into an industry still dominated by concrete and steel. He's Alex's first architect guest on the show — a deliberate choice, given how much of the conversation about sustainable real estate happens downstream of decisions made right at the start of a project. The two get into what actually happens when an architect's original vision meets the financial reality of an investment-led development process — where it survives, where it gets quietly cost-engineered out, and whether that's inevitable. Andrew argues that most of what looks like compromise is really a failure to listen early, and that the UK's real blind spot isn't ambition — it's believing it's already ahead of Europe and the US on carbon. Listeners come away with a clearer view of where the friction in the design-to-delivery value chain actually sits, why a research-led architecture practice looks different from a design-led one, and what Andrew thinks needs to change in government policy before the rest of the industry follows. ## Key Timestamps - **[00:02:00]** Andrew founded Waugh Thistleton straight out of university - **[00:04:00]** Why Alex wanted his first architect on the show - **[00:07:00]** Starting a practice in mid-1990s Hoxton on youthful confidence and energy - **[00:15:00]** Why Andrew avoids thinking about his own architectural legacy - **[00:16:00]** Designing for the people using a building now, not for how it will be remembered - **[00:20:00]** Why listening to budget and speed concerns early avoids compromise later - **[00:22:00]** Why most buildings are still concrete and glass despite new materials and AI - **[00:24:00]** The UK's blind spot: assuming it leads on sustainability when it's falling behind Europe and the US - **[00:29:00]** What London's historic architecture reveals about successful placemaking - **[00:33:00]** Why US planning authorities and cost consultants collaborate from day one, unlike the UK - **[00:38:00]** Why a third of Waugh Thistleton's turnover goes into pure research - **[00:39:00]** The real innovation isn't timber — it's industry acceptance and policy change - **[00:44:00]** The insurance quote that jumped 50% for choosing to build in timber - **[00:46:00]** Why the Hackitt Report's call to fix construction process became fixing regulations instead - **[00:53:00]** Andrew's message to sustainability teams: influence starts in the room, not just at board level - **[00:56:00]** Closing question — the one change Andrew would make: government-led low-carbon procurement - **[00:58:00]** Materials transparency: where does the sand, rebar and glass in your building actually come from - **[00:59:00]** Andrew's current frustration: wanting more collaboration across the investment and construction process ## Organisations Mentioned Waugh Thistleton Architects, Nuveen, RIBA, National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, Department for Education (DfE), Network Rail, EU Horizon ## Reports & Tools Mentioned - Building a Safer Future (the Hackitt Report): --- *The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. *This is the final episode of Season 2. Filmed at 17 Hanover Square, Podcast Rooms, London Produced by Atalor ## Follow the Show - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build ## Connect with Alex - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds ## More About Our Guest - Andrew Waugh — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-waugh-5b4b4a53/ - Waugh Thistleton Architects — Website: https://waughthistleton.com/

Aug 26

The One With… the Man Who Wants the Best Investors to Hold the Worst Assets — Chris Pyke, GRESB

Stars aren't quality. That's the quiet admission at the heart of this episode. Chris Pyke is Chief Innovation Officer at GRESB — the benchmark that shapes how institutional capital flows across real estate globally. He helped build the five-star system. And he'll tell you it was designed to rank funds, not signal quality. Investors have been reading it wrong for a decade. GRESB is now redesigning it from the ground up. Alex pushes on the reporting burden, the bunching at the top of the scoring distribution, how investors actually use the data beyond headline scores, and whether GRESB can shift from an annual retrospective into a real-time decision-making tool. In this episode:→ Why the five-star rating measures rank, not quality — and the redesign underway→ How investor use cases have diversified far beyond green-to-green screening→ Data centres: why both existing frameworks failed and what a new assessment does→ The vision for real-time, continuous GRESB scoring decoupled from the annual cycle→ When a 75% emissions cut delivers only 10% cost saving — are we tracking the right thing?→ The supply chain timing problem and why solutions miss asset managers at the wrong moment→ Why the best investors should hold the hardest assets — not offload them Key Timestamps[00:04:30] GRESB's origin: extending green building logic to the fund and company level[00:09:00] The two-sided equation — why constructive engagement was always the design intent[00:17:30] The five-star bunching problem and why stars measure rank, not quality[00:19:30] The consultation: separating scores from benchmarking, shifting to operational outcomes[00:24:00] How investors actually use GRESB — from raw data to just taking the stars[00:29:30] Data centres: a new bespoke on-demand assessment for a fast-moving asset class[00:34:00] The future state: continuous scoring, real-time data, end of the annual upload[00:42:30] When carbon metrics decouple from cost — 75% emissions cut, only 10% cost saving[00:56:30] Closing Q1: tired of looking backwards — the shift to predictive indicators[00:58:30] Closing Q2: the case against paper decarbonisation and for brown-to-green capital What you'll learn about→ How GRESB scores and ratings actually work — and why stars measure rank, not quality→ The redesign separating scoring from benchmarking→ How data centre assessments are being rebuilt from scratch→ The gap between carbon metric performance and financial materiality→ Why supply chain timing matters more than product quality for sustainability tech→ The case for brown-to-green capital — and against paper decarbonisation Organisations mentioned: GRESB, USGBC, GRI, APG, PGGM, MSCI, INREV, EPRA, Schneider Electric, Cushman & Wakefield, Measurabl, PSP Investments, JLL, LaSalle Investment Management, Nuveen, CBRE, BlackRock The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Obolife showroom (obolife.com), 8 Goswell Road, London — with thanks to Gary Helm. Post production by Atalor. Follow the showLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-buildApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346 Connect with Alex: alex@thefuturewebuildpodcast.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds More about our guestChris Pyke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-pyke-5a88ab/GRESB: https://www.gresb.com

Aug 19

The One With… the Aerospace Engineer who spotted Real Estate's broken system — and built a firm to fix it

This episode is sponsored by MapMortar - the capital planning management tool that turns portfolio risk from a spreadsheet headache into a boardroom-ready capital plan in around 50% of the time and cost. Check out ⁠⁠https://mapmortar.io⁠ Basil Demeroutis founded FORE Partnership in 2012 with one conviction: sustainability and financial performance aren't in tension — the industry just built a system that treats them as if they are. Trained as an aerospace engineer at Cornell and shaped by years managing the real estate portfolio of Jeff Skoll's family office, Basil thinks in systems. And the system, he argues, is broken — not just the buildings, but the procurement, the capital allocation, and the culture that produced them. This episode goes deep on what innovation in real estate actually looks like in practice. At TBC.London, FORE tracked 2 million components from 565 suppliers. At One Poultry, they partnered with Breakthrough Energy and UKGBC to build a Commercial Retrofit Innovation Map — 160 points of intervention, 100+ products evaluated, 16 adopted — to stop good ideas dying at RIBA Stage 3. And at CADWorks Glasgow, switching to all-electric mid-build didn't cost more. It saved £200,000. Key timestamps [00:04:00] - From Cornell aerospace engineering to Jeff Skoll's family office to founding FORE[00:09:00] - What surprised Basil most when moving from advisor to principal investor[00:12:00] - TBC.London: 2 million components, 565 suppliers — the supply chain reality of a single retrofit[00:17:00] - "No one's ever asked me that" — the leadership failure slowing real estate innovation[00:19:30] - Introducing the Innovation Map: 160 points of intervention[00:21:30] - How the FORE, Breakthrough Energy and UKGBC partnership at One Poultry came about[00:25:00] - Bacteria-fired tiles from a North Carolina cave — backing early-stage material science[00:32:00] - The 3% problem: climate VC targeting 38% of global emissions[00:37:30] - How going all-electric mid-build saved £200,000 at CADWorks Glasgow[00:34:00] - Innovation for innovation's sake is just theatre[00:44:30] - What problem Basil is trying to solve right now[00:46:00] - Policy asks: VAT harmonisation for retrofit and the case for carbon pricing Organisations mentioned:FORE Partnership, MORE, Breakthrough Energy, UKGBC, Capricorn Investment Group, Skoll Foundation, 2150, MapMortar, Q Flow, KKR, Sage Group, Stiff + Trevillion Architects, McKinsey, Gallup What you'll learn aboutRetrofit-first investment strategy, Commercial Retrofit Innovation Map, procurement and innovation adoption, supply chain complexity in deep retrofit, climate capital misallocation, the green premium myth, VAT and carbon pricing policy The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly.Filmed at Podcast RoomsProduced by Atalor. Follow the showLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-buildApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346 Connect with AlexLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds More about our guestsConnect with Basil Demeroutis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/basil-demeroutisFORE Partnership: https://www.forepartnership.com

Aug 12

The One With... the Engineer Turned AI Innovator and the 300-Year-Old Estate — Ranjeet Bhalerao & Simon Tranter

This episode is sponsored by MapMortar - the capital planning management tool that turns portfolio risk from a spreadsheet headache into a boardroom-ready capital plan in around 50% of the time and cost. Check out ⁠https://mapmortar.io Ranjeet Bhalerao left his consultancy job after a £100k study could model just 5 of 300 buildings. He founded MapMortar.io to fix that. Simon Tranter has to decarbonise nearly 900 mostly-listed buildings across Marylebone by 2040 — and he's the one actually using the tool. One sells the fix. The other tests it in the real world. Alex has never used it, so he asks the awkward question: does AI-led retrofit planning change what actually gets built — or just produce a better-looking version of the problem? In this episode:→ Why "stop counting, start cutting" is the whole argument→ The £100k study that modelled 5 of 300 buildings — and started a company→ Why no landlord wants another dashboard: "outcomes, not software"→ Modelling a building from just its address: maps, LIDAR, EPC data→ The head-to-head — AI model vs on-site consultant survey. How close?→ EPCs as a milestone, not a destination→ Sequencing retrofit to tenancy and refinancing — when sustainability is just asset management Timestamps:[00:02:00] The decision dies in the meeting, not the modelling[00:03:00] "I've never used it — but Simon has." Why this isn't a pitch[00:09:00] From the Battersea Power Station retrofit to founder[00:11:30] The £100k study that could model only 5 of 300 buildings[00:16:30] "No landlord wants another software" — outcomes over dashboards[00:20:30] 14 prized assets surveyed — and why it won't scale to 900[00:39:30] Building a model from just an address: maps, LIDAR, EPC, GIS[00:42:30] AI vs the on-site consultant: results "came out very comparably"[01:00:00] Timing a boiler to a lease — and winning better refinancing rates[01:02:30] Buildings as products, and the one thing each would change Organisations mentioned:MapMortar, The Howard de Walden Estate, Arup, BuroHappold, Battersea Power Station, British Land, Imperial College London, Carbon13, University of Cambridge, UCL, IES, WSP, Max Fordham, CBRE, Climate Change Committee, Property Week, Yardi, CQuel. More about our guests:Ranjeet Bhalerao: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranjeet-bhalerao-5a549617MapMortar: https://mapmortar.ioSimon Tranter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-tranter-25814439Howard de Walden Estate: https://www.hdwe.co.uk Follow the show:🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-buildConnect with Alex:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds Recorded at Podcast Rooms, 17 Hanover Square, London. Edited by Atalor. New episodes weekly.

Aug 5

The One With... the Team Who Mapped Every Barrier to Scaling Sustainability in Real Estate — UKGBC

This episode is sponsored by MapMortar - the capital planning management tool that turns portfolio risk from a spreadsheet headache into a boardroom-ready capital plan in around 50% of the time and cost. Check out https://mapmortar.io — The built environment doesn't have an innovation problem. It has a scaling problem. Emily-Rose Garnett and Philippa Birch-Wood of the UK Green Building Council authored the report mapping why sustainable solutions in real estate keep dying in pilot. Alex — who once ran innovation inside a major property firm — recognised every barrier in it. The solutions we need mostly already exist. The problem is systemic, not technical: risk-averse cultures, a certification catch-22 that starves materials innovators, and pilots never designed to scale. In this episode:→ Why the sector's problem is scaling and adoption, not a lack of ideas→ The certification catch-22 blocking low-carbon materials→ The funding gap that kills hardware innovators between pilot and manufacture→ Demand aggregation, collaborative pilots and collective insetting as fixes→ Who should lead — developers, the big advisory firms, or networks→ Whether the AI budget scramble is slowing everything else down Timestamps:[00:05:00] Not short of solutions — short of scaling[00:07:00] The seven barrier categories[00:11:00] The vicious circle blocking materials innovation[00:16:00] Demand aggregation and low-carbon concrete[00:18:00] The real pace of change in real estate[00:22:00] 20 years in real estate and never meeting[00:33:00] Where do JLL and CBRE actually sit?[00:41:00] Dropping "positive disruptors" into design teams[00:52:00] How AI budgets slow every other decision[01:01:00] Magic wand: consistency and sharing what fails Organisations Mentioned UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) Innovate UK ESBEM — Emergent Sustainable Built Environment Materials innovation network Accelerating Concrete Decarbonisation Group FORE Partnership Breakthrough Energy 2150 JLL CBRE Cushman & Wakefield LaSalle Investment Management MapMortar (episode sponsor) Reports & Tools Mentioned Scaling Sustainable Solutions for the Built Environment: Barriers & Enablers (UKGBC)Commercial Retrofit Innovation Map (UKGBC)UKGBC Solutions & Innovation Advisory GroupInnovate UK ESBEM UKGBC Solutions Library The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Recorded at Podcast Rooms. With thanks to the production team at Atalor. Follow the Show and connect with Alex LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-buildLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds More About Our Guests Emily-Rose Garnett — Senior Advisor, Solutions & Innovation, UKGBC. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/emily-rose-garnett-381943109Philippa Birch-Wood — Head of Climate Action, UKGBC. Profile: ukgbc.org/our-teamOrganisation: UK Green Building Council — ukgbc.org

Jul 29

The One With... the QS Who Went All In On AI

If AI has only made us 20% faster in five years, James Garner calls that abject failure. Everyone in the built environment is talking about AI. Very little of that conversation is about what people are actually doing with it today. James Garner has spent 20 years as a quantity surveyor and now leads AI and data at Gleeds. He sits on the RICS panel that wrote the profession's new AI standard, and hosts Project Flux. This conversation is about practice, not projection — where AI is genuinely changing decisions, and where the industry is quietly kidding itself. In this episode: → Why the real picture of AI adoption is "jagged" — brilliant and broken inside the same firm→ The capability gap: everyone has the tools, almost nobody has the skill→ Why shaving 20% off a process misses the point entirely→ Cutting 10% off a building's carbon vs asking whether you need the building at all→ The RICS AI standard, broken into four plain-English parts→ Where your agency actually sits when frontier labs are becoming empires→ A half-hour exercise anyone can do today to make better decisions Timestamps: [00:01:00] Twenty years a QS — and a 1990s dissertation on digitising construction[00:05:00] How a friendship at Imperial College produced his first machine learning model[00:09:00] Where AI is genuinely working right now — and why there is no gold standard[00:17:00] The capability gap, and the risk of a two-tier industry[00:26:00] Susskind's question, the drill and the hole in the wall[00:28:00] Procurement, beauty parades, and buying car insurance before the internet[00:37:00] Why technology was never the bottleneck — culture was[00:41:00] Wrong decisions made early, then defended for a decade[00:45:00] Build your own AI board of advisors — the half-hour exercise[00:47:00] The RICS AI standard: literacy, governance, use, and bias[00:55:00] Closing questions: education, and ripping up the curriculum The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. Produced by the team at Atalor FOLLOW THE SHOW 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-we-build/id1877617346🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build CONNECT WITH ALEX 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST James Garner, Senior Director and Global Head of AI and Data, Gleeds🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgarner1976🌐 Gleeds: https://www.gleeds.com🌐 Project Flux: https://projectflux.ai

Jul 22

The one with... the Housebuilder Seeking To Decarbonise 8500 Homes A Year

Bellway builds around 8,500 homes a year — and a large share of its carbon footprint comes not from construction, but from the homes people live in after they buy them. Jamie Bursnell, Group Head of Technical and Innovation at Bellway Homes, has spent years working out how you actually decarbonise a new home at scale. His conclusions upend a few assumptions. The gas boiler won't be banned — the compliance tool will simply make it impossible to build with. And the hardest problem isn't technology, it's pricing: with electricity roughly three times the cost of gas, the greener home can cost more to run, and no politician wants to move that cost. In this episode:→ Why the end product, not the process, is where real estate must innovate→ How the Future Homes Standard ends the gas boiler without banning it→ The Energy House: testing a full home in a climate chamber→ What the heat pump research revealed: more is less→ Why electricity at 3x the price of gas is the real barrier→ How batteries and smart charging change the maths→ Embodied carbon, timber frame, and why bricklayers matter Timestamps:[00:01:00] Why house builders are the closest thing real estate has to a product[00:02:00] Bellway's scale, and its two drivers for innovation[00:03:00] The Future Homes Standard and the end of the gas boiler[00:11:00] Why not build somewhere to test and iterate the product[00:12:00] The Energy House opportunity — a home you can experiment on[00:16:00] The heat pump lesson: fewer pumps, simpler controls, more is less[00:21:00] Electricity at three times the cost of gas — the core problem[00:26:00] Smart charging, batteries and running cycles on free solar[00:34:00] Embodied carbon: 35 tonnes in a typical home, and timber frame[00:43:00] Why bricklayers didn't enjoy the low-carbon bricks[00:45:00] The magic-wand fix: invert the cost of gas and electricity The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes weekly, filmed at Mute showroom, Great Sutton Street, London. 🔗 Show LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-future-we-build Connect with Alex✉️ alex@thefuturewebuildpodcast.com🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexedds

Jul 15

The One With... The Investor Who Switched Sides To Run The Climate Standard For Real Estate

CRREM tells real estate investors whether their assets are Paris-aligned or heading for stranding risk. Andrea Palmer is one year into the role as CRREM's first CEO — appointed after leading ESG integration for PGGM's global listed real estate portfolio, where she was pricing climate risk into valuations before most of the industry was paying attention. She previously worked at LaSalle Investment Management, GRESB, and Triodos. In this conversation she draws a hard line between two ways the industry uses CRREM — and argues that collapsing them is where the confusion starts. The first is transition risk assessment: understanding exposure, pricing it, and deciding whether to mitigate, accept, or get paid for it. The second is portfolio climate alignment — a different intent that can be achieved through capital reallocation without any CapEx. Andrea also addresses whether grid decarbonisation gives asset owners a free pass, reveals methodology assumptions being retired, and explains the deliberate strategy to embed CRREM into existing tech platforms rather than building a standalone tool. Key timestamps [00:00:00] Andrea's path from Chicago to Amsterdam via LaSalle and GRESB [00:06:00] How she approached CRREM — and what the first year has been like [00:13:00] The two buckets: transition risk assessment vs climate alignment [00:21:00] Grid decarbonisation assumptions baked into CRREM — policies not targets [00:25:00] Top-down pathways vs bottom-up asset reality — the pizza oven problem [00:36:00] Expanding to climate zone pathways for the US and Australia [00:39:30] Data centres: why they need an entirely new methodology [00:42:30] London Climate Week — Technical Council and the 0.8 version of CRREM's 2030 vision [00:48:00] Hong Kong — self-organised data sharing and the open contribution model [00:50:30] The one-to-many strategy and why Andrea doesn't want another login [00:54:30] Embodied carbon — relevant but not ready [00:57:00] Magic wand: data sharing across the board [01:00:00] Education at LP and banking level — the critical missing piece Organizations mentioned CRREM Foundation PGGM / PFZW LaSalle Investment Management GRESB Triodos Investment Management EPRA Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) APG Asset Management International Energy Agency (IEA) CBRE The Future We Build is a podcast exploring sustainability, innovation and systemic change in the built environment, hosted by Alex Edds. New episodes released weekly. Filmed at Obolife showroom, 8 Goswell Road, London - with thanks to Gary Helm Post production by Atalor Follow the show LinkedIn: The Future We Build Connect with Alex Connect on LinkedIn More about our guest Connect with Andrea Palmer on LinkedIn CRREM Foundation: https://crrem.org

The Future We Build

The One With... The Architect That Says the UK Has Lost Its Edge

The One With… the Man Who Wants the Best Investors to Hold the Worst Assets — Chris Pyke, GRESB

The One With… the Aerospace Engineer who spotted Real Estate's broken system — and built a firm to fix it

The One With... the Engineer Turned AI Innovator and the 300-Year-Old Estate — Ranjeet Bhalerao & Simon Tranter

The One With... the Team Who Mapped Every Barrier to Scaling Sustainability in Real Estate — UKGBC

The One With... the QS Who Went All In On AI

The one with... the Housebuilder Seeking To Decarbonise 8500 Homes A Year

The One With... The Investor Who Switched Sides To Run The Climate Standard For Real Estate

Trailers

Season 2 Trailer - The Future We Build

The Future We Build Season 1 Trailer

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The Future We Build

Episodes

The One With... The Architect That Says the UK Has Lost Its Edge

The One With… the Man Who Wants the Best Investors to Hold the Worst Assets — Chris Pyke, GRESB

The One With… the Aerospace Engineer who spotted Real Estate's broken system — and built a firm to fix it

The One With... the Engineer Turned AI Innovator and the 300-Year-Old Estate — Ranjeet Bhalerao & Simon Tranter

The One With... the Team Who Mapped Every Barrier to Scaling Sustainability in Real Estate — UKGBC

The One With... the QS Who Went All In On AI

The one with... the Housebuilder Seeking To Decarbonise 8500 Homes A Year

The One With... The Investor Who Switched Sides To Run The Climate Standard For Real Estate

Trailers

About

Information

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