AHMM’s Head of Sustainability features on BBC Politics North 21.07.26

Dr Craig Robertson, Associate Director and Head of Sustainability, was invited to speak on BBC Politics North (Yorkshire and Lincolnshire) about the challenges and opportunities associated with heatproofing new and existing buildings, in particular schools, to cope with increasing global temperatures.

Joining Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West, and Ryan Taylor, Leeds councillor, Craig explained the importance of analysing future weather projections when designing climate resilient buildings, in order to understand how they will behave now and into the future as temperatures continue to rise. Retrofit strategies and the design of new projects alike require consideration of measures including the reduction of solar gains and the introduction of good ventilation pathways, to ensure that our built environment is fit for the future.

In 2022 Craig won the CIBSE Barker Silver Medal for a paper on an integrated building performance evaluation of Burntwood School. Titled ‘Balancing energy and indoor environmental quality in a UK School’, the paper reported on a holistic building performance evaluation of Burntwood as a recently built school campus in London, assessing the performance issues and interrelationships between energy and Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ). Analysing metering and monitoring data along with feedback from stakeholders show that an integrated design approach to energy and environmental performance is required. The paper was authored by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in energy, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting and acoustics at UCL’s Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering.

The episode is available to watch for a limited time on BBC Iplayer here.