#Ecobuild Preview – what are you doing?

Next week is Ecobuild, the largest event about sustainability in the built environment in the UK – that I know about.
Ecobuild takes place at Excel in London on Tuesday – Thursday 5-7 March.

Its free to attend and you can book a ticket in advance on the website.

Finding stuff on the Ecobuild website is an absolute nightmare, so I thought I’d pick out a few things I was doing to see if they might be of interest to you as well. I’m hoping to set up a photoblog during the event which I’ll share on a new post.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to this year.

Tuesday 5 March

I’m going to spend some of the morning with Will Jones of Ecophon on the Saint-Gobain stand (N310). Saint-Gobain are exhibiting a ‘day in the life’ of their innovative product solutions covering Newbuild, Renovation, Education and Commercial. I’ll be interested to see more about Ecophon’s work in improving sound quality in schools, and Saint-Gobain always have a great range of demonstration exhibits.

At 11.45am on Tuesday there is a session in the Platinum Suite – What does Sustainability add to Property Values? This is part of a programme of Property related sessions on Tuesday.

I’ll be spending the afternoon on the Nedzink stand where my clients SIG Design & Technology are launching a new partnership to supply zink and copper products to specifier and contractors specific requirements. You can read about the venture here.

As I’ll be standing still at this point it might be a good time to pop over to see me at stand N435 – come and say hello!

In the evening I have an invitation to attend a networking event over in New Oxford Street, but there might be some other things happening on Tuesday night. Have you got any suggestions?

Wednesday 6 March

On Wednesday at 12.40 Sarah Cary of British Land will be speaking about the client’s perspective of designing low carbon offices, in a group of talks on low carbon design imperatives. This session takes place in seminar room 7.

From 2.30-4pm on Wednesday Sarah will be chairing a series of talks on Responsible sourcing of materials in Seminar Room 9. These include Nigel McKay, Head of Procurement at Lend Lease talking about aims, benefits and next steps, and James Goodfellow of Make Architects talking about the design process, where no doubt he’ll be using 199 Bishopsgate as an example. Click this link and scroll down to the 1430 slot.

Somewhere along the way I must make time to pop into the UKGBC Big Tent to take part in some of their sessions. For example,
From 3.15 on Wednesday, the Women in Sustainability Debate with Hattie Hartman, Sally Hancox from Gentoo Green, Jennifer Clark from Skanska and Claudine Blamey from the Crown Estate. In a sector dominated by men, what can the industry do to attract and hold on to talented and skilled women? How do we shatter the glass ceiling? The Big Tent sessions agenda is here.

I’m hoping to meet up for a coffee with Susie Diamond of Inkling LLP before the announcement of the Rising Star Award in memory of Mel Starrs. We haven’t met before, but as is often the case, first found out about each other on Twitter. Susie runs a building physics consultancy and I first heard about her because she worked with Mel.

At 5pm the UK Green Building Council is holding a members reception for its 6th Birthday at the UK-GBC village, where the Rising Star Award will be announced. If you’d like to come you’ll need to complete this form to register your interest.

After that BE2Camp, a collective that was enthusiastically supported by Mel, will be having a small get together (maybe not even an official ‘tweetup’) at the Bree Louise pub next to Euston Station, from 7pm. You can find out where that is and let us know you’re coming here.

Thursday 7 March

There’s a group of Seminars on Refurbishment taking place in Seminar Room 4 throughout Ecobuild and I think I’ll dip into these on Thursday.
From 10.30am a series of speakers are giving case studies of Retrofitting large buildings, including the Strand Palace Hotel.

By this time I’ll probably have had enough!

I happened to notice that Ecobuild has made its own top 100 Ecobuild twitter list which you can see here – shame there are no ‘follow’ buttons though.

And Tomorrow – Building Design Tweetup

Before next week if you’re a twitter user there’s also the BD Twitter 100 announcement of their take on the ‘top 100 architecture tweeters’. You might remember I blogged two years ago about the flurry of activity in the architectural press about twitter. Now two years on Building Design have revisited the platform and are taking a more detailed look.
Here’s what they say about their list.

Tomorrow BD announce the full list at a ‘Tweetup’ (a meeting in a pub of real people no less!) which you can attend at The Gallery, 50 Redchurch Street, London (just off the Kingsland Road near Shoreditch High Street Station).

What are you doing at Ecobuild?

Are you going to Ecobuild? Why not share what you’re looking forward to in the comments below, and do provide links to further information if you can. That way we might even be able to meet up…