Embodied carbon basics for structural engineers on-demand course

Jane Anderson FRSA has over 20 years’ experience in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Embodied Carbon and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for the construction industry. She has provided consultancy around this to Welsh Government and the European Commission, and reviewed projects for BSI, RICS, CIBSE and WRAP. She has written guidance on Embodied Carbon for Woodknowledge Wales, ASBP, Construction Products Association, CIRIA and WRAP. She represents the UK in the development of European and International standards for EPD and Building LCA and acts as a verifier for several European EPD programmes including BRE. She has recently taken over as the Chair of B/558, the BSI Mirror Committee for sustainable construction standards.

Will Arnold is an award-winning engineer and environmentalist, and Head of Sustainable Materials for the Useful Simple Trust: a group of pioneering designers and consultants striving to regenerate our built and natural environment. His career has taken him around the world, engineering high-profile buildings across four continents, and pushing the boundaries of design and technology. He is the lead author of the Part Z proposal to regulate embodied carbon in the UK, and has led the embodied carbon aspects of UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard since the project's inception. Will is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Bath where he teaches and researches regenerative design. Through his writing and public speaking, Will brings clarity, urgency, and optimism to one of the greatest challenges of our time.

Grace Di Benedetto CEng is a structural engineer from Arup, based in the Building Engineering group in London. She advocates for low-carbon design and material reuse on her projects and is on the leadership team for Arup’s Structural Engineering Sustainability Hub UK.

Jenny Burridge FIStructE leads the team of structural engineers at The Concrete Centre who are dedicated to enabling all those involved in the design, use and performance of concrete to realise its full potential. She is a chartered civil and structural engineer with more than 30 years’ experience in the construction industry including working for Arup and AECOM designing award winning buildings in both the UK and mainland Europe. She is the UK representative on the CEN task group looking at revisions to the fire part of Eurocode 2 and chairs the BSI Advisory Committee for Engineering Design and Construction.

Orlando Gibbons CEng is a structural engineer at Arup, specialising in embodied carbon and working closely with the buildings sustainability team. He is an active member of the IStructE’s Sustainability Panel and of cross-industry groups looking to minimise embodied carbon.

Penny Gowler MIStructE is Associate Director at Elliott Wood with over 15 years’ structural engineering experience and an interest in the sustainable refurbishment of existing buildings. As sustainability lead, Penny is instrumental in embedding embodied carbon analysis across Elliott Wood projects. She is passionate about low carbon design and circular economy principles and aims to drive structural engineering projects towards a lower carbon circular economy approach.

Will Hawkins MEng is a Lecturer in Structural Engineering Design at the University of Bath. He graduated from Cambridge in 2013, worked at AKTII for two years, and then completed a PhD on the design and optimisation of novel, low-carbon, concrete shell floor structures. Today, his research and teaching focuses on achieving zero carbon in construction, through design optimisation, novel structural systems and enhancing our understanding of the ecological impact of materials.

John Orr MIStructE is University Lecturer and EPSRC Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge. John’s teaching and research are closely linked to sustainable construction and improving construction sector productivity. John several funded research projects and has built a team of 14 around his vision for optimisation of existing and future infrastructure by learning from real performance. He is a member of the IStructE Sustainability Panel and was elected to IStructE Council in 2020.

Walter Swann MIStructE is a Chartered Structural Engineer with a varied career in construction that spans design consultancy, steel fabrication and steel making. He leads ArcelorMittal’s Steligence Engineering team in the UK, a business unit that advises and supports clients, architects and designers to deliver buildings with low overall environmental impact using a palette of “best in class products”.