It was a real pleasure to share insights from Future Restorative and other initiatives at the Specifi Services and Facilities Management event in Bristol last night.

The event was also billed as part of the World Green Build Council’s Green Build Week, focusing on re-imagining carbon to address the World GBC’s call for all new buildings to be zero by 2030 and for all buildings by 2050. A very ambitious call, but as the recent report From Thousands to Billions points out, we already have thousands of zero buildings, we just need to learn from these climate hero buildings and scale up for the remainder.

To do so, we have some awesome solutions and proven approaches now available to us – for example in Paul Hawken’s Project Drawdown, William McDonough’s  Reimagine Carbon work, (Nature: Carbon is not the Enemy) the Well Build and Living Building Challenge standards – all of which indicate future pathways to zero.

My keynote “We Eat Carbon for Lunch‘ focused on carbon positive aspects of two Living Building Challenge projects – the Bullitt Centre in Seattle and the Cuerdon Valley Project in Lancashire. Very different projects indeed – but climate heroes both, demonstrating that restorative sustainability is possible. Much of this work and thinking is being explored by the EU COST Restore action, a network of researchers and practitioners from across the EU and beyond, exploring how Rethinking Sustainability leads to Regenerative Economies.

Questions following my keynote from the audience indicate important themes for future keynotes at upcoming Specifi events

• What is the Living Building Challenge?
• What are the financial considerations for restorative sustainability?
• What one (services) climate solution could we implement tomorrow?
• Just what is Biophilic Design?
• What clients and organisations are adopting Restorative Sustainability approaches?

Specifi events are unique, providing an opportunity to listen and to learn from inspirational speakers, an opportunity to learn and share in an informal networking format with leading exhibitors and industry colleagues, and then to discuss in more detail over a three course meal. (All included in the free attendee ticket price!)

The Bristol event was in partnership with CIBSE YEN (Young Engineers Network) – these are the young engineers of the future, hungry with an appetite to learn more, on restorative sustainability, but also from the services and facilities organisations exhibiting.

Future events in 2017 include Glasgow (Landscape) Newcastle, (Design) Birmingham (Landscape) and London (Design and Services)

I am delighted to be part of the Specifi Team – curating keynotes and talking at events throughout 2018, so I look forward to continuing the discussion with the Services people in Bristol next Feb and to meeting you at your next local Specifi event soon.