‘His Majesty at 75’: Our Sustainable Journey

Interview with Steve Lakin, our Consultant Advisor

In advance of the eagerly awaited release of ‘His Majesty at 75: The leadership and Vision of King Charles III’, in which CPW will be recognised for its sustainability efforts, we will be sharing a series exploring CPW’s history of sustainability and our commitment to develop the sustainable engineers that will shape the country’s future.

As part of our ‘His Majesty at 75’ series, we sat down with Consultant Advisor Steve Lakin. We delve into CPW’s sustainable history, uncovering the journey to our current low carbon practices, exploring the parallels that align our mission and that of King Charles III, as we collectively strive to shape a more sustainable future.

Why is sustainability important to CPW?

Sustainability has been a core part of our business for at least the last 15 years, long before our rebrand in 2021 which centralised our green credentials. It was and still is, so important to our ethos – we wanted to make sure that it was at the forefront of our service offering.

The built environment contributes around 40% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. If you can reduce the energy that the buildings consume and the carbon that they produce, then you’re on the way to making a huge difference to the planet.

We noticed the industry slowly started to change in 2010, after the first introduction of sustainability regulations. Since then, we have seen amendments that look to push this further, including the recent consideration of Part Z which CPW has shown support for.

Sustainability is where we see the future of mechanical and electrical engineering going; highly efficient, fossil-fuel free M&E services are fundamental to achieving net zero. We believe that in order to be successful in this industry, all our M&E engineers need to be experts in carbon reduction to fully meet the needs of our clients - M&E expertise alone isn’t enough anymore.

So how are we showing our commitment to sustainability?

I mean, it's twofold really: there's what we can do internally and how we affect change more widely through our projects. Being Planet Mark certified, we consistently measure and demonstrate reductions in our carbon footprint, achieving a 31.3% reduction in our first year compared to the previous 12 months. As members, we also support Cool Earth in protecting rainforests and contributing to carbon sequestration which is amazing to be a part of.

In the future, we’re looking to go fossil-fuel free in our offices with the introduction of heat pump technology and full migration to all-electric vehicle fleet – we actually recently installed EV charging points at our head office. Another thing we do generally, wherever possible, is repair rather than replace in our offices to save on embodied carbon and reduce waste.

These are just several small things we do internally; our goal, however, is to have an impact on a much larger scale which is where designing net zero pathways for our clients comes in. If we're building, for example, a whole campus, hospital or multi story building, if we can design that to be net zero or very low carbon, then that makes a bigger impact on the environment, alongside the collective effort we make at our offices. It’s fundamental to us that we practice what we preach.

Which projects for you feel are most important to tackle the climate crisis?

The focus on sustainability shouldn’t just be on new builds. There's going to come a point in time where people won't be constructing new buildings as vigorously – they won't want the embodied carbon that is created in building them. It's a bit like throwaway culture, isn’t it? It's like having a reusable mug at Costa – you're reducing the amount of new waste that needs to be created to have a coffee.

What we're trying to do is, not only apply our expertise to new builds but refurbish existing buildings to be more efficient, to regenerate, to form a new ‘new’. As we said in ‘His Majesty at 75’: we’re saving the future by solving the past. We aim to save the future by working out how to solve all the problems with older builds – this may involve replacing glazing or reforming insulation, we might place in new systems that use zero carbon services such as PV, wind, ground source or air source heat pumps, to name a few.

CPW have many years of experience and knowledge of achieving this in innovative and sympathetic ways.

That seems like a tougher challenge! How do we achieve that?

Well, it's a lot tougher, but given that 80% of building which will be in use in 2050 already exist, it's important that we crack it if we want to tackle carbon emissions. We're doing a lot of work with the University of Oxford, where we're trying to decarbonise 15th century buildings which is a challenge, especially when it’s listed. You can't completely change everything, but it's the small changes that compound and make a huge impact when it comes to sustainable building solutions.

To achieve this involves expert knowledge provided by our Innovations Team. When it comes to existing buildings we really aim to dive into sustainable reformation. This may involve using specialist equipment to determine the U-value or thermal performance of the building. By doing this, we can work out how we can improve overall heat transfer.

Another aspect we look at is air infiltration which is how much air leakage there is. Pulling knowledge from our Innovations Team, we work together to plug any gaps and then proceed to the next step which involves thermal imaging.

So, these three areas are key and are just a handful of examples of some of the processes we use to help clients come up with a way to make the building fabric more thermally efficient. Then we can start to look at the services in terms of what you put in to make the project both efficient and less carbon intense.

Even if you reduce operational carbon emissions to net zero – the carbon we produce while a building is in use – there is still going to be carbon as a result of creating the building and generating energy. Unless you can start to take that carbon out of the atmosphere, then it's always going be there. So, I expect to see more on carbon capture in the near future, it’s something that our Innovations Team are looking into closely.

How do you feel this aligns with King Charles III’s mission and ‘His Majesty at 75’?

If you look back, King Charles has always held the view that we need to be more sustainable, championing measures to protect the environment. He has been an ardent defender of the planet his whole life really and we feel our company has developed a similar approach over its lifetime as well. Hence the reason why we were asked to be involved with the book.

We have a similar mission, with our main driver being to reach net zero and to create a more sustainable world, particularly when it comes to the built environment.

Read more about our approach to sustainability on our Climate page