Service Category: Sustainability

TFT joins Irish Green Building Council

TFT is a member of the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC), the Irish branch of the global Green Building Council community of over 80 groups promoting sustainable building around the world.

IGBC is now Ireland’s leading authority on green building best practices with a network of over 300 member organisations with influence across the entire built environment industry.

With this membership, TFT has broadened its long-running partnership with the UK Green Building Council, including work on advancing industry knowledge around:

• Embodied ecological impacts
• Circular Economy principles in construction
• Social value and community engagement

Though these initiatives remain relevant tools for our industry, Ireland’s policy and regulatory frameworks present different routes to sustainable building in the region than are used in the UK.

The IGBC also leads a number of ground-breaking projects providing proof of concepts and showing the way forward for transformative changes in the Irish property and construction market:

• Home Performance Index (HPI) certification: a scheme for sustainable housing and planning at local and national levels.

• Full building Life Cycle Analysis (LCA): IGBC is raising awareness about embodied carbon using an EPD Ireland database to provide a national platform for suppliers and manufacturers to upload their Environmental Product Declaration Certificates. In addition, it is developing a national generic construction database provides a store of Irish building information to be used in early-stage building-level LCA

• Carbon Design Tool: giving designers a simple way to calculate the carbon impact of their designs.

• Piloting a Construction Materials Exchange: this scheme demonstrates a user-friendly system for the reuse of construction materials that would otherwise enter the waste stream.

Kevin Brannigan, Head of TFT’s Dublin office, said:

“We know leading building owners and occupants count sustainability as a top priority, but we still find inconsistent understanding of how to achieve these goals or how organisational ambitions are met in different regions.

So partnering with the IGBC is a great way to combine TFT’s understanding of sustainable, valuable and resilient buildings with the IGBC’s leading research, education and industry engagement work. Together I look forward to elevating standards and knowledge across the board.”

Kevin Brannigan, Head of TFT’s Dublin office

Find out more about the IGBC here.

Staff Stories – Supriya Kamath

Staff Stories – Daisy Fox-Pope

Supriya Kamath

Supriya is a London-based Associate Director leading TFT’s Sustainable Development services. She works as part of Sustainability and Net Zero Carbon Hub.

Supriya’s is passionate about decarbonisation of the Real Estate Industry and enjoys collaborating with TFT Clients to assess their Real estate ESG priorities and identify areas for improvement in achieving their Net Zero, Decarbonisation and Sustainable Development goals.

She is a qualified Architect with a specialism in Sustainable Development in the built environment and Corporate Environmental Strategy. Her expertise focuses on sustainability certifications, planning and wellbeing. She has led and delivered BREEAM Excellent and Outstanding certifications on a number of developments. She has written sustainability statements for complex planning applications for a number of projects to meet the London Plan Sustainability Policy requirements and also worked on a number of WELL and LEED certification projects. She also has expertise in a range of complementary services such as whole life carbon, embodied carbon, circular economy reporting and Environmental management system.

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TFT takes on LandAid’s SleepOut Challenge!

On Thursday 2nd March 2023, the TFT team took part in the LandAid SleepOut, raising money to help end youth homelessness.

The SleepOut is a regular fixture in our calendars, in which we sign up to spend the night sleeping (or trying to sleep) outside, getting an insight to the conditions which many homeless people have no choice but to endure. This year was as challenging and rewarding as ever!

Thank you to the 13 people who took on the challenge: Jack Holland, Aditi Kumar, James Williams, Paul Skennerton, Marc Hill, Jay Ridings, Chris Keates Lewis, Gareth Barry, Robin Holme, Lisa Gunn, Denitsa Cherneva, Michael Wheeler and Dan Henn, who slept out at LandAid venues and at home around the country.

And this year had a twist, as LandAid challenged us to craft our own SleepOut ‘bed’ with just a sheet of cardboard! Deni Cherneva was up for the challenge, using her design skills to score second place, with a cosy bedroom setup…apart from the draughts!  

Most importantly, our one night in the cold helped LandAid raise more than £4,000 towards their total, which is now approaching £600,000! So a little bit of discomfort goes a long way to providing shelter for thousands of young people who would otherwise face the elements year-round.

Following the SleepOut, our team members had a lot to say about their experience, here are some of the thoughts they shared:

“It was exceedingly cold, and even more noisy. Sleeping alongside 432 others, makes you aware of how many people snore (about 80%) and the different tunes they play! 😊 So worthwhile – apparently best part of £600k raised from all locations! TFT were runners up in the best bedding design – well done Deni with her amazing talents. We were beaten by The Royal Household who created a Windsor Castle lookalike – very impressive.”

– Chris Keates Lewis, HR & Operations Partner

“It was how I imagined it would sound being part of an invading Viking army. Funny the things you think of when sleeping out! Well done everyone, great effort!”

– Jay Ridings, Partner

“A massive thank you to the staff who put in the hours to make it happen, and much respect to the charities who do the important work with the money we raise. I’m looking forward to seeing the progress on the refurbishment works for Kingsley Hall, which 1625 Independent Bristol are undertaking with the funds raised by our Bristol sleepers!”

– Paul Skennerton, Head of Communications

A huge well done to everyone who took part and a massive thank you to everyone who supported us by donating.

If you would like to donate you can still do so by clicking here: https://join.landaid.org/fundraisers/TFTSleepOut2023

Now, who’s up for SleepOut 2024?!

International Women’s Day Interview – Amy Henderson

International Women’s Day Interview – Emily Brodie

International Women’s Day Interview – Lorna Melton Scott

Emily Brodie

Emily is based in the TFT’s Edinburgh office. As a chartered building surveyor she has well rounded experience across both project and professional services for commercial properties.

She forms part of the project monitoring team working on the St James Quarter development in Edinburgh. Her technical expertise includes technical due diligence, reinstatement cost assessments and contract administration. She has a keen focus on dilapidations, acting for both landlords and tenants across a wide range of sectors and sitting on TFT’s dilapidations working group.

Emily is the Vice Chair of the BPF Future Advisory Board and acts as one of three officers for Scotland on the board, providing networking and learning experiences for those in the property industry with less than 10 years’ experience.

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Lorna Melton-Scott

As HR Business Partner at TFT Lorna works strategically with the Partners across the business to ensure TFT is a great place to work and enable success through excellent performance management including tailored training and development opportunities.

Lorna aims to support people to be the best they can possibly be, whether they have just joined or been here a while.

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