Five months after I joined UKGBC’s cohort of Future Leaders 2023, I found myself standing on stage, in front of an audience of industry professionals, discussing my love of bricks and my own personal leadership journey. In its tenth year, the five month programme, brings together ambitious and sustainability driven individuals from across the built environment to inspire a new generation of leaders and transform how we tackle the climate emergency.

Through a mix of online and in person workshops, retreats and showcase events, the renowned programme invites participants to push themselves beyond their comfort zones and drive transformational change within themselves and their organisation.

The cohort are supported by a dynamic and varied group of speakers and facilitators that encourage everyone to think differently and challenge themselves as leaders while striving to create a built environment that enables both people and the planet to thrive.

Across the programme, there are two fundamental focus areas: developing an innovation idea within a group of peers and articulating your own leadership journey. These are addressed across a two day innovation workshop in London, a multi-day residential retreat in Stroud and various webinars and smaller working groups in-between. A showcase event is the culmination of all the hard work over the duration of the programme, celebrating the progress and success of each group.

INNOVATION

The innovation groups ran for the duration of the course, striving to work together to tackle an issue in the built environment. Each group’s work culminated in a presentation at a showcase event in June to our peers, wider industry professionals and a judging panel. My group, Circular Reality, strove to change mindsets away from a linear perspective, towards a circular economy.

The construction industry is currently responsible for around 62% of the waste generated in the UK, generating 124 megatons of material waste annually - enough to build new housing for every inhabitant in Austria and Hungary. Across the whole of UK industries, only 7.5% of input materials ever get circled back into the UK economy after use.

Surprising? Not when a 2019 survey revealed only 14% of UK adults were familiar with the term ‘circular economy’. The Take - Make - Waste principle is ingrained in all aspects of public life which permeates the construction industry through our roles as inhabitants. Without changing the awareness, knowledge and expectations of wider populations, we have little chance of bringing about the broad systematic change required to adapt to a more circular way of thinking.

Our world has finite resources which cannot sustain our current rates of extraction and waste and the repercussions for carbon emissions and ecology. The carbon budget for the construction sector in the EU (27 countries plus the UK) runs out in 2026 and we are living through a declared bio-diversity crisis. Changing perceptions on the circular economy across society can be a big step to address this.

With these figures in mind, our group came up with the innovative concept of Circular Reality – a free browser game to educate the general population and the construction industry on the importance of circularity and ways to engage with circular goals. It is developed in partnership with gaming partners such as SIMs, and large audience partners such as UKGBC, The Ellen Macarthur Foundation and RIBA. Initially targeted at homeowners, players will navigate around a 3D house, and will decide how to refurbish their house through a series of thought provoking, nuanced questions. Question responses will determine if players helped or hindered their avatar. Will you kill your avatar from the odour of ever-growing waste? Will it be death by embarrassment because they did not understand the circular economy? Or will your avatar turn their trash to treasure?

Upon completion, the player’s score and stats will be given as a shareable visual, along with links to find out more about the interventions discussed, including vouchers for real products from industry partners. The shareable visual will encourage engagement and make others want to play. Future game developments include additional levels and building typologies which scale up to consider streets and neighbourhoods with the target audience extending to developers, designers and policymakers, driven by data collected from users.

The game’s impact aims to be wide-reaching due to its online nature, changing homeowners' approach to renovations and thereby reducing associated waste. Circularity could divert 50 million tonnes of UK waste from landfill every year. By increasing general understanding of the circular economy, the game will help circularity become reality:

In educating a population on the circular economy, a serious and current topic, through a fun and interactive platform the following benefits will be seen:

• The game will initially target homeowners, as housing represents 84% of the UK’s existing building stock.
• By partnering with The Sims or similar, the game could reach over 70 million existing players. These players are the optimal demographic for our game, with the majority aged 25-35, where the average first time homeowner is 33 years old.
• In 2021, there were 15.5 million UK homeowners. Within a year, the game aims to reach 5% of these. If 1% make a decision considering circularity, that’s 7,750 people making circular choices.
• The game-based learning market is expected to grow annually at 21.9% from 2021 to 2026. Assuming our game reaches new customers at this same rate, engagement will double by 2026.
• Future expansions will respond to feedback improving the experience, with periodic thematic expansions released to maintain engagement.

In educating a population on the circular economy, a serious and current topic, through a fun and interactive platform the following benefits will be seen:

• The public perception around circular economy will change and people will realise the potential impact of their decisions and the positive alternatives available, some of which can be implemented at ease;
• Circular economy decisions will become easier with a better understanding of the concept, and will eventually be a key part of built environment decision making, ensuring circularity becomes the new standard;
• Game based data will be sold to relevant companies allowing those companies to understand consumer behaviour. When the game makes its intended impact, the demand for circular goods and services will increase. Companies will be able to use this data, to anticipate the change in demand and ensure sufficient supply;
• Partnering with companies who embrace the circular economy and signposting homeowners towards the most suitable providers will support sustained expansion, bringing companies who share our philosophy on the journey of growth;
• We’ll all have fun!

PERSONAL LEADERSHIP

During a two-day retreat in Stroud, we spent time considering our own leadership journey and the type of leader we want to be. It is rare we take time away from our phones, with no distractions, within nature. The quiet allowed us space to think and contemplate what is important to us. Following this period of reflection, I found myself volunteering to discuss my love of bricks at the showcase event in June.

‘A simple brick, may on the surface seem to not have much to do with leadership, but when I think about their qualities, there is strong correlation to what I consider important in a leader today.

They are one of the oldest, most traditional building materials, with a simple form. They are honest, they have integrity. A brick is not trying to be something it’s not.

They are inherently sustainable and adaptable, made of natural materials and can be re-claimed, re-used, re-cycled, even crushed and made into new bricks.’

As a child of two Doctors, I spent a lot of time in hospitals, GP surgeries, care homes, in waiting rooms, in staff rooms, in consultation rooms….and the feeling was often the same. These spaces made me feel ill, they had the opposite effect of what they were trying to do. My parents were there, trying to help people, trying to make people better but they were often doing this in spaces that were working against them.

They were trying to understand the building blocks of their patients, I wanted to understand the building blocks of the spaces themselves.

As a doctor studies the cells of the body, we need to look at the individual elements on their own to start to understand what spaces they can create.

What does this mean for a simple brick? When you consider a brick on its own, it is one thing….a door stop, a match lighter, a bookend…its dimensions have a ratio of 3:2:1 and that is where some of its hidden strength lies. It can fit together with other bricks, working as a team, to create countless combinations, endless opportunities.

It is reassuringly strong and yet versatile. It does the everyday, and the breathtaking. It does the hard graft of the bog-standard brick wall and then creates incredibly extravagant and delicate detailing on gothic churches.

When I think of the importance of architecture, it is about creating spaces that help the most people. For me, that comes down to homes. If you are able to create a home for someone where they feel safe and happy, it helps nurture every other aspect of their lives. That is where the strength in residential design lies.

For many people in the UK, when they imagine their homes, they imagine bricks and mortar, the bricks support a heritage, memories, while also allowing for a vision, allowing a person the space to dream.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The programme was a fantastic way to reassess my own leadership and learn to prioritise what I consider important. In an ever-changing world, it allowed me to adapt and integrate the process of innovation, and the tools required, into my working life. It connected me to a powerful community of peers, developing long-term connections and hopefully a continued relationship with UKGBC through a dedicated alumni group called the Future Leadership Forum. The group allows us to continue to work together beyond the programme, sharing our experiences of sustainability leadership.

With the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stating the symbolic limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius will almost certainly be breached and with a worrying roll back on green policies by the government, it is easy to feel defeated. However, my overwhelming takeaway from my time as a UKGBC Future Leader, is that we can be both outraged and optimistic. With innovation, ambition and united effort, we can make significant change. Our industry thrives on change, let’s seize the opportunity and perhaps consider the often-overlooked brick.

As leaders, do you share the qualities of an everyday brick? Are you honest and accountable? Are you adaptable and sustainable in your actions? Are you independent and yet collaborative? Are you strong and yet versatile? Do you allow space for your team to create memories while allowing them the space to dream? So, I challenge you, Future Leaders, to go to the office tomorrow and think, what would a brick do?