Robin Nicholson, convenor of the Edge and fellow of Cullinan studio

1 Introducing our guest editor, Robin Nicholson
- 1.1 Background
- 1.2 The Edge
2 Could you tell us about the particular features and news articles you have chosen?
3 Can you tell us a little about your background?
4 What areas of knowledge are lacking across the industry?
5 What is the value of and barriers to sharing knowledge across disciplines and institutions
- 5.1 Open access and green shoots
- 5.2 Networks and action
6 How did you first discover Designing Buildings?
7 Do browse the site or receive the biweekly newsletter?
8 What are the particular themes you are interested in?
- 8.1 Procurement and the planet
- 8.2 Joined up messaging
9 How was it to be our guest editor and would you like to nominate someone for the guest editor slot ?
10 Related articles on Designing Buildings

[edit] Introducing our guest editor, Robin Nicholson

[edit] Background

Robin has extensive practice experience and has been involved for many years in a wide range of industry initiatives. Initially working for James Stirling in London and Cristian Boza in Chile, he is now a fellow of Cullinan Studio, having worked alongside Edward Cullinan for many years after joining the cooperative practice in 1979. He has worked on a wide range of individual buildings and master plans, covering healthcare, education, and housing, both in the UK and abroad. He has continued to highlight issues around carbon emissions from the built environment and climate change for many years.

[edit] The Edge

As well as chairing the Cambridgeshire Quality Panel, he is actively engaged with the Edge, an interdisciplinary construction industry think tank that he helped set up in 1995 and now acts as convenor. He is engaged in organising their regular meetings and debates, including for Futurebuild (www.edgedebate.com). Previous roles have involved the NHBC, CABE, RIBA, the zero-carbon task force, and many more. He was awarded a CBE for Services to Architecture in 1999 and an Honorary Fellowship of the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2002.

We caught up for a brief chat just as COP26 was coming to a close and the outcomes, or lack of, were becoming clearer. We talked about experiences and activities, the Edge policy proposals for the built and natural environment, as well as the Edge Biannual Report‎. Although now stepping back from practice, Robin continues to remain a key industry figure, happy to talk openly and frankly about successes and failures relating to the built environment, both at the policy and practice level, where it seems to be heading and where perhaps it should be heading.

[edit] Could you tell us about the particular features and news articles you have chosen?

COP28 and the Path Ahead for industry and Leading the Charge for Building Efficiency and Net Zero Transformation Post COP28 – great that you have an informed digest of what was going on in Dubai. COP28 was being promoted as a success shortly after but has the moment passed and are we are past the tipping point?

The impact of pandemic and new legislation on academy training courses. Fascinating reaction to the Building Safety Regulation although it is sad that there is nothing about collaborative procurement like IPI though good to see it covered in the article Integrated Project Insurance.

The Edge policy proposals for the built and natural environment 2022 and The Edge Biannual Report 2023

National Retrofit Hub. I was very impressed with the National Retrofit Hub, Working Groups page and the updates from all of their 6 workstreams.

Social Value of the Built Environment. Buildings and Cities is an international, open access, peer-reviewed, academic journal publishing high quality research and analysis on the interplay between the different scales of the built environment, and a focus on policy, practices and outcomes.

Cullinan Studio, makes room for nature. Collaborators bringing together designers, makers, planners and academics to develop practical ways to unite the built and natural environment. Born in 1965, our legacy teaches us to embrace the challenges of our time with creativity and optimism.

[edit] Can you tell us a little about your background?

I joined the architectural and masterplanning cooperative Cullinan Studio over 40 years ago and am now engaged as a Fellow, which allows me to keep feeding wider industry experiences into the practice. I was elected to the RIBA Council in 1991 and appointed Vice President in 1992. I became chair of the CIC and a founding board member of the Movement for Innovation (Egan Report), whilst in parallel helping establish the Edge as a multi-disciplinary think-tank for the built and now natural environment, under the sponsorship of the Arup Foundation.

The Edge champions collaboration between the professions, at all levels and in all fields, by establishing programmes on which the all-too-siloed bodies can practice working together. In 2015, the Edge published Collaboration for Change, written by Paul Morrell, summarising the Edge Commission on the Future of Professionalism; this was republished in 2020 by ACO.

In June 2019, the Edge convened a meeting at the RIBA where 25 institutions from across the industry agreed to work together to meet the targets set by the Committee for Climate Change; this led to the Edge drafting and helping organise an action plan for the industry under the CIC Climate Change Committee, which is now supported by over 40 bodies.

This year, the Edge has been holding round tables on current issues such as Net Zero in Local Plans for DLUHC and, most recently, the costs and impacts of delays on national infrastructure for the NIC. Being a voluntary organisation with no staff, the Edge tends to be trusted by Government and other public bodies.

[edit] What areas of knowledge are lacking across the industry?

[edit] Nine years to adopt knowledge is too long

The biggest problem is behavioural, as there is masses of knowledge out there if only it were shared and sensibly deployed. There is no real incentive for new knowledge generated by research to find its way into an industry that prefers to do what it has always done the way it has always done it. It has been estimated that it takes around 9 years for new knowledge to be adopted by industry, which is too long.

[edit] Verification, continuity and communication

There is still very little performance verification or post-occupancy evaluation, but there are good grounds to imagine that a combination of building safety and climate regulations, backed by funders and insurers, will bring about the change we so badly need. One issue, for example, is that site managers are project-based, so they move from job to job, taking knowledge and wisdom with them, while the hard-pressed middle managers have no time for exploring better ways of doing things.This really highlights that the issues the industry faces have, in my view, much more to do with communication than anything else, along with the need for regulation to drive change, supported by demonstration projects.

[edit] Movement for Innovation

After the Egan report, the Movement for Innovation was a fantastic example of this: real projects that were delivered faster, safer, and with fewer snags, as verified by fairly sceptical reviewers. There were a lot of these demonstration projects but the issue here was again communication and getting the knowledge out there. There is increasingly a need for communication or an understanding of these issues to be picked up as part of education, as well as ongoing professional training. It is something the Edge is still working on, for example, bringing high-level cross-discipline infrastructure leaders together to review methods and projects beyond capital costs to include the vast range of KPIs that now need to apply to projects and decision-making.

[edit] Counting carbon

I think in terms of climate, it varies enormously between the professionals. There's no doubt that the engineers and surveyors are happy because they get to measure things, and they are very good at it, so the speed with which practitioners rather than institutions have gotten their heads around embodied carbon is impressive. Partly as a result of the GLA requirements, the industry has changed, which was helped by RICS and Simon Sturgis being significantly ahead of the game.

[edit] What is the value of and barriers to sharing knowledge across disciplines and institutions

[edit] Open access and green shoots

It defies belief that we don’t share knowledge and business practices more readily. The main barriers are our institutions and the curricula they manage. As CIBSE has shown, it is valuable for them and the industry to make their knowledge freely accessible. We learn secret disciplinary languages in our first week in college, and it is time that all universities champion cross-disciplinary learning, starting with the climate and biodiversity emergency, which must be taught to all from day one (and before) on a cross-disciplinary basis. Bath University showed the way many decades ago, and there are now a few green shoots, but not enough. Both industry and young students are demanding change.

[edit] Networks and action

Institutions are collaborating at two levels, which I think is much better than they used to be. One is on policy, and where sustainability leads, they talk to one another which has been really helpful for the organisations; for example, embodied carbon, which has gone in five years from nothing to some standard metrics, which is quite extraordinary. In terms of practice, networks such as LETI, which is kind of parallel with the Edge but much bigger, provides guidance with real metrics, and members that are aligned with other industry bodies. Secondly a number of our Professional Institutions have new Chief Executives and with better communications we can anticipate greater collaboration between them.

[edit] How did you first discover Designing Buildings?

When Gregor Harvie first set the wiki up, Buro Happold were strong supporters, and through them, the Edge. It has grown to become a valued resource.

[edit] Do browse the site or receive the biweekly newsletter?

I confess that the sheer volume of material we all handle daily has meant that I didn’t subscribe until prompted to by your request to guest edit this. I am looking forward to skimming the content and then diving into the pieces that most interest me.

[edit] What are the particular themes you are interested in?

[edit] Procurement and the planet

My main interest now is the state of the industry and its institutions, procurement, and government leadership (or, currently, the lack thereof), particularly in so far as they impact the peaceful state of the planet. The UK has sadly gone from being the global leader to putting our collective heads in the sand. Until recently, the climate emergency was a cross-party endeavour, led admirably by Lord Deben, and I look forward to a rapid return to this position after the next election, albeit with a new chair of the essential Committee for Climate Change.

[edit] Joined up messaging

My normal mantra or little story about the relationship between industry, institutions, and government comes from when we set up the Commission on the future of professionalism which led to the publication of Collaboration for Change . The previous Chief Government Adviser on Construction, Paul Morell, leapt at the opportunity to be involved because, as he has said publicly, he had been apoplectic about the way the professional institutions behaved. Each institution would visit a minister on a certain topic and promote the idea of their special relationship with the government; each time, if related to the construction industry, Paul would be present. He would hear them then tell Government what it needed to do, when actually the institutions needed to come together with answers to problems that the government was facing. The institutions needed to join the dots and then visit the Ministers.

ICE had a fantastic group of institutions they were working with on infrastructure, and being located opposite the Treasury, they had very good communication with the government. I think institutions can sometimes be their own worst enemy because it is kind of built in that they are the protectors of the faith of their particular discipline, but trying to solve national problems needs a coming together. This government did set up the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) as a means of communication with the joint industry, and although in the beginning the board wasn’t really a balanced representation of the industry, today it is more representative.