Carrie Behar: 0:00

the handover process and the training and engagement that is required to help people live sustainably in their homes. I wouldn't want anyone to feel kind of blamed about using a building wrong. I don't think there should be a right or wrong way to use a building. I think it's your home. You should feel comfortable and if you feel like opening the window, that's fine, you should be able to. So I think it would be helpful to understand how to use your home in an efficient and economic way, and I think what often happened, what I observed in a different piece of work was the handover taking place, basically the point where you get the keys to your home. So someone then comes in and gives you a sort of 10 minute explanation of this is your heating system, this is your boiler, this is your thermostat, and it's very quick. It doesn't give you a chance to kind of have a go and set it up yourself. Someone's just talking at you and at the moment you've just got your keys and you're thinking, oh, you know where am I going to put the sofa, or I've got to get back to work or something. So I think it's allowing space and time for a proper, proper handover, um allowing.

Carrie Behar: 1:01

I also reviewed lots of building user guides building user guides through that process and found that they often just don't provide the right information. Quite often they're just the sort of compilation of the technical documents from the manufacturer, so they'll describe systems that are different from the ones that you have, or they might describe features that aren't present or they've just been photocopied so all the labels have kind of gone off the images. So I think making those building user guides really usable there's also opportunity for that and I know there are housing associations who have looked at doing things like this. So, for example, a video recording of the people, the designers, showing bits of the building and how to use them and then giving that to the occupants. Quite often by this point in the project the money's all been spent. Everyone's tired, things perhaps have gone a bit longer than they were supposed to and everyone's kind of itching to just get on, get the people in and get Get done.

Carrie Behar: 1:51

Get on to the next thing. So I think, starting to plan those things early and then sort of budgeting and allowing space for them, and then I think the sort of follow on from that is to then the importance of post-occupancy evaluation, which still isn't as widespread as it should be, and that again go back understand how the building's being used and use that to make any corrections, but also to inform future design more accurately.

Darren Evans: 2:19

Hello and welcome to the Thriving Construction podcast. Today I am honoured to welcome our guest, carrie Bihar. Carrie, it's great to have you here with us.

Carrie Behar: 2:28

Thanks, darren, good to be here.

Darren Evans: 2:30

Fantastic. So, Carrie, I think that there's going to be a number of people that will know who you are, but just for the benefit of those people that have not heard of you before or familiar with your work, can you just give us a bit of a run through of what it is that you do and what you're involved in?

Carrie Behar: 2:44

Yeah, absolutely so. I work as a sustainability consultant for an organisation called the Useful Simple Trust. We are a multidisciplinary built environment consultancy so we offer a range of engineering, design and consultancy services spanning all aspects of the built environment, and my role within the organisation is kind of twofold. It's split between two things. So I spend half my time in the civils and master planning team working on master planning projects and specifically around kind of embedding principles of sustainable development and regenerative design within master planning, and then my other hat is as head of sustainability for the Useful Simple Trust and in that role I lead our organisational sustainability programme, so looking after our carbon footprint assessment, looking at how we measure and communicate our impact, B Corp CSR programmes and so on.

Darren Evans: 3:40

Sounds like you've got a lot to do.

Carrie Behar: 3:42

Yeah, I'm busy.

Darren Evans: 3:43

How long have you been at the company?

Carrie Behar: 3:45

sounds like you've got a lot to do. Yeah, okay, brizzy, how long have you been at the company? Uh, I've been around eight years. So I joined as a sustainability consultant after just as I was wrapping up my my PhD, so there's a bit of an overlap, but yeah, about eight years ago great, let's delve into that.

Darren Evans: 3:57

Actually, your PhD what was, what was it that led you to do a PhD? And then, what did you? Uh, what did you focus?

Carrie Behar: 4:04

Yeah, so I initially trained as an architect and that's something I always thought that I would go into and really passionate about. You know, really really loved being all aspects of kind of the built environment, the kind of technical aspects, but also the kind of social things, understanding how people use buildings and the kind of impact that the built environment and public realm has on us as people, because, you know, that's kind of what it's here for. So, and then when I was finishing my studies in 2009 or so, it was kind of depths of recession, particularly, as you know, in the construction sector. These things are quite boom and bust and we feel the dips hard.

Carrie Behar: 4:42

So a lot of my friends and peers who were working at the time in the architecture profession were out of work, being made redundant, and I basically took the opportunities to stay on at university and do a master's in environmental design and engineering, which was a kind of real eye-opener to me because through that master's I learned about some of the science, the modeling, the sort of technical aspects of environmental design and buildings, environmental engineering, and it opened my eyes to the challenges of climate change and the impact of carbon emissions and I kind of went on this journey there where I was like, wow, okay, this is kind of where I want to focus my efforts. And then through that work, the opportunity came up to apply for a funded PhD place. So I just jumped at that and thought, brilliant, I could spend four more years at uni being paid to study the subject I love. So you know, I couldn't really say no.

Darren Evans: 5:32

There are worse things to do in life right. So was doing your master's the point where it felt like your eyes were open to certain things or your perspective had changed.

Carrie Behar: 5:40

I think so. I think it was in the back of my mind. I think so. I think it was in the back of my mind and I think even as a child, I had this sense of kind of like wanting things to be fair and just, and I knew that I was going to want to do a work that was meaningful. I knew that buildings were important and you know people needed clean and safe and comfortable homes, but I just didn't have that kind of the numbers and the technical knowledge and the language to be able to, like a, explain it and understand it but also feel like I could impact on it.

Darren Evans: 6:07

So, yeah, I think that masters was really transformative for me fantastic, and I know that there's a number of people out there listening to this podcast that will be thinking I've done a master's and I'd love to do a PhD, but I'd really love to do it if it was funded. How did that work out for you? How did you manage to bag a funded PhD where you got paid to do something that you loved?

Carrie Behar: 6:28

I mean, I think I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and the department I was working in I was at UCL, at the UCL Institute of Environmental Design and Engineering, and they were just going through the process of forming a new department called the UCL Energy Institute and they were just going through the process of forming a new department called the UCL Energy Institute and they secured funding for PhDs around energy demand reduction in the built environment. That was the kind of subject of the funding stream. So they opened applicants but a lot of PhDs are funded. There's a website called something like phdscom I'd have to check the email address we can put it in the show notes where funded programs are advertised and I think really most of the phds that were being done were funded ones, because who can afford to pay to live and the fees connected to that? So I was.

Darren Evans: 7:19

I was very lucky what tips would you give or advice would you give for someone that is wanting to apply for a PhD specifically within the realm of sustainability within construction? What advice would you give?

Carrie Behar: 7:32

Yeah, the one thing I would say is to be quite broad and open about the specific subject.

Carrie Behar: 7:36

Like quite often, these positions are advertised, as with a specific research programme or a question or a subject matter, and I think as long as it sort of vaguely piques your interest, I think within that there is always scope to evolve the direction that the research goes into, something that is sort of really meaningful to you and that you think is worthwhile. And I think, over the course of the you know the first year of my PhD out of a three-year program, the first year was spent doing the literature of your reading and understanding and trying to refine the question, refine the experiment that I was going to do or the study. So in that time, and just slightly vary on the subject matter, some schemes are more constrained but ultimately you kind of have the ability to shape the research in the direction that you want to go. So don't be put off if it sounds like something that maybe is just a little bit different to what you'd like to do, because I think there's always an opportunity to sort of mold it Exactly.

Darren Evans: 8:29

Yeah, I think that's really important that it never ends up how it starts off in your mind Exactly. Or maybe I could say that the other way is that the way that it starts off in your mind is not your ending place. No, so what was the question that you answered or the topic that you addressed within your PhD?

Carrie Behar: 8:47

Yeah, so what I was looking at was how people adapt to living with new types of technology in homes, and it was specifically focusing on ventilation technologies in new low energy housing. So something that had been sort of happening over decades really is that homes have been becoming more airtight in order to limit the heat losses through ventilation and to just be more energy efficient and that's really important to reduce carbon emissions and, you know, mitigate climate change. However, one of the sort of challenges around that is that, well, there's several challenges, but one of them is that if you make your home airtight, you need to provide ventilation in a different way for um occupant health, for comfort, to get out pollutants, to get out smells and, I think you know, almost most importantly is to mitigate damp and moisture problems and the mold that can come about as a result of poorly ventilated spaces. So, and to do that, new homes are typically built with a centralised ventilation system, something that most of us living, or many of us living in the UK, aren't used to.

Carrie Behar: 9:51

Our homes traditionally were very leaky. They were poorly insulated. We had sort of old single glazed windows, draft gaps, ventilation bricks and so on on. So new homes are being built with with mechanical ventilation systems, things like mechanical ventilation, heat recovery and mvhr, and that comes with a kind of expectation of how they're used. And what I was looking at was kind of how that expectation mapped across to what was actually happening in people's homes.

Carrie Behar: 10:24

So I spent a lot of time visiting people in homes asking about how they interacted with the ventilation system. Did they even know it existed? Did they know how to maintain it? Did they know what it was there for and how else they were ventilating their homes? Were they using windows, doors? And it was fascinating. And then I kind of mapped that against, also speaking to the designers, the architects involved and some of the contractors in designing and constructing those homes, and to look at the kind of mismatch, I suppose, between how people imagine a home will be lived in and what actually happens. And I found that these mismatches are what I believe contribute towards the performance gap, so that difference between predicted and actual energy consumption.

Darren Evans: 11:06

Absolutely. Yeah, that's fascinating, and we've seen the same thing in my consultancy around the performance gap, for sure, but also around the concerns that people have, for if I've got a really, really airtight building, what is going to go on with the, the moisture, how is? How am I going to make sure that I'm not going to have damp within that space? But also, how am I going to make sure that the tenants of these buildings are going to understand and use the equipment in the right way? So I'm talking specifically here within the um, the social housing area. So did you, in your research, do interviews with people in social housing, with rented and also with their own owned?

Carrie Behar: 11:53

home. So actually, my research was all based on social housing as well, and part of the reason for that was purely to do with the access to the buildings, and so the housing associations that I worked with were involved in post-occupancy evaluation programs, looking at how sort of energy was being used in those homes. So the people I spoke to were tenants only, so I didn't have a chance to speak to people in privately rented or owned properties.

Darren Evans: 12:23

So the group of people that you focused on were social housing tenants. That's right, fantastic, okay. And so what did you find was the most common misconception within that group of people?

Carrie Behar: 12:34

Well, I think there were a few, but there were definitely several people I spoke to who were not aware that they had a centralised ventilation system in their homes, so they just moved in.

Darren Evans: 12:41

They'd moved in, they'd been there for six, seven years in one case. So they just moved in.

Carrie Behar: 12:44

They'd moved in.

Carrie Behar: 12:45

They'd been there for six, seven years in one case and they just didn't know it was there. So we went up together to the loft, opened the door and there was a box in there that was the air handling unit, and they were like, oh I don't really know what that is. So they hadn't been told by their landlord. The landlord hadn't been carrying out any of the maintenance that is required. So typically you would need to clean out or change the filters on these systems every I don't know three to six months, depending on sort of usage. So that wasn't happening. The tenants weren't doing it themselves because they didn't know it was there that they were supposed to. So there's definitely a few cases like that. The other, I don't know about misconception, but the sort of the modelling assumptions for these technologies assume that once that ventilation system is installed there's no need for ventilating through windows and therefore the windows won't be used anymore. So the theoretical energy calculations are based on a kind of closed window scenario.

Darren Evans: 13:42

So are you talking about within the SAP calculation?

Carrie Behar: 13:46

Okay, fine For example, in the SAP calculation or if you did an AES or sort of dynamic thermal model, you would typically assume that the windows are closed. And really I spent a lot of time talking to people about how much they open their windows, what they open them for reasons. People were opening their windows, lots of reasons to do with, not to do with ventilation, particularly around pets actually smelly pets, letting in and out dogs, cat flaps. There's one family who had a had a snake that was really smelly apparently, so she liked to leave the um the door on the latch all the time, a little bit of jar just to keep air moving through. So that was. And actually on the flip side of that there was um. Some of the homes I looked at had been designed with night ventilation in mind.

Darren Evans: 14:28

Just go into a bit of detail on that. What is night ventilation?

Carrie Behar: 14:30

Yeah, so the idea is that in hot weather there's a risk of overheating in very well insulated and airtight homes, and so a way to mitigate this is through night purge ventilation, the idea being that you leave windows open at night time when it's cooler, so that the air in the dwelling or in the home is changed over, it's pre-cooled a little bit, and then in the morning, typically when it starts to warm up, you would close the windows and that would kind of the coolth would stay inside the building and it would just sort of slow the rate at which it heats up. So hopefully you can get to the end of the day without getting those kind of really hot peak temperatures. So night ventilation is great in theory. But the homes that I look around, firstly no one had been told that that was how they'd been designed or sort of suggested that they do that. So there was a kind of gap in the handover communication.

Carrie Behar: 15:19

But also there was sort of practical reasons why opening windows at the night was just not possible for them or they didn't feel it was possible. So some people lived on the ground floor, were concerned about security. There was one family where they were very scared of spiders and just were concerned about insects coming in. There was another group of houses that were close to a canal, so they were concerned around mosquitoes, and then there was a. The sort of night vent scenario was based on opening a roof light. So obviously if it's raining or if you're worried about rain at night and water coming in, you also wouldn't want to leave that um window ajar. So all these kind of practical realities to how you live, you know, in your home um that mean that what is modeled isn't what actually happens in real life. So I found that really interesting.

Darren Evans: 16:08

And when you say those things, it's obvious isn't it. You know, I know lots of people that are scared of spiders, and I know lots of people that wouldn't feel comfortable leaving a window open, even slightly open, on a ground floor whilst they're asleep in bed, exactly.

Carrie Behar: 16:24

And these are sort of, I think in the scientific world these are sometimes seen as or described as anomalies, but that's not true. It's sort of everyone has something that means that they use a building in a way that's very specific to them and their needs and their requirements, and not the way that it's modelled. So the sort of model needs to allow a much greater tolerance, I think, for the variation in actual lived experience compared to what it currently does.

Darren Evans: 16:48

So we can put a link to your paper in the description. Summarize the outcomes from your research and the advice that you would give to the local authorities when they are providing social housing with that type of technology in.

Carrie Behar: 17:16

So I think the main finding or the recommendation was around the handover process and the training and engagement that is required to help people live sustainably in their homes. I wouldn't want anyone to feel kind of blamed about using a building wrong. I don't think there should be a right or wrong way to use a building. I think it's your home. You should feel comfortable and if you feel like opening the window, that's fine, you should be able to.

Carrie Behar: 17:43

So I think it would be helpful to understand how to use your home in an efficient and economic way, and I think what often happened, what I observed in a different piece of work was the handover taking place, basically the point where you get the keys to your home. So someone then comes in and gives you a sort of 10 minute explanation of this is your uh heating system, this is your boiler, this is your thermostat, and it's very quick it. It doesn't give you a chance to kind of have a go and set it up yourself. Someone's just talking at you and at the moment you've just got your keys and you're thinking, oh, you know where am I going to put the sofa, or I've got to get back to work or something. So I think it's allowing space and time for a proper handover Allowing. I also reviewed lots of building user guides.

Darren Evans: 18:30

Yep building user guides.

Carrie Behar: 18:32

Building user guides through that process and found that they often just don't provide the right information. Quite often they're just a sort of compilation of the technical documents from the manufacturer, so they'll describe systems that are different from the ones that you have, or they might describe features that aren't present or they've just been photocopied so all the labels have kind of gone off the images. So I think making those building user guides really usable is also an opportunity for that, and I know there are housing associations who have looked at doing things like this, so, for example, a video recording of the people, the designers, showing bits of bits of the building and how to use them and then giving that to the occupants. But quite, quite often by this point in the project the money's all been spent. Everyone's tired, things perhaps have gone a bit longer than they were supposed to and everyone's kind of itching to just get on, get the people in and get get done get on to the next thing.

Carrie Behar: 19:24

Yeah, so I think starting to plan those things early and then sort of budgeting and allowing space for them, and then I think the sort of follow-on from that is to then the importance of post-occupancy evaluation, which still isn't as widespread as it should be, and that to again go back understand how the building's being used and use that to make any corrections, but also to inform future design more accurately.

Darren Evans: 19:49

The thing that I love there, from what you said, is that there is no blame to attribute. Here, and I think that that has been one of the things that I've seen show up, is this concept of blame and almost shaming, which I think is really really unhelpful, because I think that someone living or moving into a new home will want to get the best out of that home. But they've got maybe kids in the car or pets in the car, be that a snake, a gerbil or whatever it is and they're feeling quite anxious and excited. Maybe they've just got the keys. Someone comes in and gives them a 10 minute example of, or 10 minute presentation, or 10 minute demonstration of, uh of how the house should work. They're going to take probably one percent of that information in and just say well, carry on, don't worry about it and then just go on with the way that they've lived in the past in a completely different house than what.

Darren Evans: 20:46

What they've got at the moment and so I really like that concept of what you're saying is is not their fault, it's not the designer's fault. I don't even think it's the housing association's fault. But what I do think is that there is an opportunity to have a think is how can we make the building user guide really useful for the user of that building or the home user guide? How can we make that really really useful? Simple to understand for someone that doesn't understand or is not interested in the manufacturer's blurb that comes out of how their product should be used? Simple, really easy. How can we do that? I think that's a good question to ask.

Darren Evans: 21:26

I think the other good question is that post-occupancy assessment. How can we make sure that we're adding the maximum value to our tenant, because our tenant's desire is to use that building to the way that it's been designed. That's going to be their desire. They won't be able to articulate it that way because they probably won't think about it. But if I translate that experience that you've got moving from into a home, maybe to a car, and I've just got into this car and there's loads of what you might call bells and whistles on it.

Darren Evans: 21:59

I want to understand how to use the bells and whistles. So it's like bells and whistles could be viewed from that perspective in terms of moving into a house.

Carrie Behar: 22:07

I think that's right and I think it's also worth picking up on thinking about the kind of individual circumstances of people coming into a home, and particularly in the social housing sector, but anywhere really. So often the building user guide is provided in English only, but people don't have English as a first language or maybe don't have any English at all. There were situations where people had learning difficulties or you know, for example, there was someone I spoke to who had really severe dyslexia and couldn't read. So handing over a hundred page building user guide just isn't appropriate.

Darren Evans: 22:42

It's not going to get read.

Carrie Behar: 22:43

The car analogy is interesting. I mean, the thing about cars is that they are a mass produced and kind of optimized product and I think sometimes people have said the sort of analogy of a ship or a cruise ship is more appropriate for buildings because they're more one-off, they're more bespoke and you don't have the chance to kind of prototype and test over and over again, which maybe is why some of these challenges come up I'm just wondering, with that, with that mentality though, of these are the features of the home, and presenting it in that way to a homeowner may change the way that not just the homeowners receiving the features of that home, but also the way that those people that are involved in that home are also presenting that.

Darren Evans: 23:25

There's a bit more excitement, that's there. There's a bit more focus, a bit more of a dynamic approach to how to try and sell in inverted commas the benefits or the features to that home, as opposed to you've got a lovely view out of the window.

Carrie Behar: 23:41

Yes, I think it's about the quality and the format of the messaging and then also the timing. I think the timing is really important. I think that point where you're just arriving in the new home isn't isn't the moment. It needs to come either earlier, um, as part of the sort of briefing viewing process, perhaps later, once you've had a chance to settle, or ideally, probably at multiple points, because it takes a little while to learn a new skill and how to operate a new building, and the idea that you can just do it in one short hit, I think, is what evidence shows that that's not working Fantastic.

Darren Evans: 24:16

How did you get to this point You're now. You're making a significant difference in the built environment. You're clearly passionate about it. If you go back to when you were four, five, six, what do you think the seeds of this passion that you have were born from?

Carrie Behar: 24:35

Well, so I, like many other kids growing up in the 80s, probably absolutely loved playing SimCity. I was completely, completely hooked. It was so much fun and I thought that that meant that I wanted to be a computer game designer and sort of. In my young youth I spent a lot of time drawing what I thought were going to be sort of the levels and the bosses and the baddies and all of that connected to computer games. But really I think what it was, you know, the sort of SimCity thing. It's more that sort of the strategic planning, the infrastructure and sort of thinking how things fit together. And I was good at maths and it sounds like a cliche, but maths and art were my favorite subjects and that kind of just naturally, uh, led me towards towards architecture.

Carrie Behar: 25:17

Um, but what's funny now, actually thinking back with SimCity, I was never very good at it because I refused to build roads. I decided that the only way, um, my cities would work was purely on rail infrastructure. Okay, so I designed all these things without any roads and then there'd always be. They wouldn't go very well because everyone has died, there's been a fire and the fire ambulance, fire brigade couldn't reach it because there's no roads. You need to build more roads and I'd say no, no, no more roads. And funnily enough, now I won't tell you how many years later. I live in London. I live in one of the biggest cities in Europe, quite centrally. I have family, I have two kids. Still no car Go everywhere by bike, by foot or by public transport. So you know, something in there was planted early around that kind of the need for a kind of connected public transport and shared infrastructure.

Darren Evans: 26:12

Did you when you were growing up with a, with a car as part of your life, growing up?

Carrie Behar: 26:17

yeah, yeah, we did, we got driven.

Carrie Behar: 26:19

I got was driven to school, growing up less, but but as I became a teenager because I also grew up in london I was able to be quite independent, without my parents, without needing a car and because of public transport yeah, being able to travel by bus, being able to meet friends in town and my you know, I really welcomed that and it was just amazing, I think, as I was a teenager, not having to kind of ask my parents to come and pick me up from parties and all that kind of stuff. So I think I really appreciate it and we we traveled as a family on the bus and my parents commuted into town and so on. So I think I and I mean I'm fortunate I live in a city that has pretty good public transport, so it does make it a lot easier.

Darren Evans: 26:59

For sure, the transport in London is outstanding compared to the rest of the country. For sure, yeah, it absolutely is. So talk to me about who the influential people were in your early years of life. Who was it that told you that you were good at maths? How did you discover that you were good at art or that you're good at maths?

Carrie Behar: 27:18

I just loved maths and I found it very, very easy until I got to a point where I stopped finding it easier and then I stopped enjoying it. To be honest, once I got to kind of A-level. But when I was very young it just came to me very naturally and people at school told me I was doing well at it. So and then I think on the art side of things, there's creativity on both sides of my family. I think my mum, particularly in her family, were very creative, always encouraged me to kind of express myself creatively, particularly kind of in painting and drawing and things like that, and my mum used to draw pictures of us and my dad and my grandparents, you know, spent time. It was just sort of something that we did at home.

Carrie Behar: 27:59

So and then I was fortunate, I think I went to a school, particularly my secondary school, that wasn't just focused on academic performance. It was there was lots of time to do kind of drama, art, painting, things like that. So I did Archie Sissy, I did art A-level and had great teachers who were very kind of, encouraging and supportive of that, and actually I liked it so much that I spent a year after school I did an art foundation course at the Wimbledon School of Art, which was a really just a brilliant time, but I think it made me realize that I like the creative process, but I didn't want to be a fine artist. For me it was more about design and sort of making things that were useful and more tangible and using my creativity that way.

Darren Evans: 28:44

One of the things that we discussed before we started recording is that your mum has got Polish origin. She came from Poland and your dad is from the UK, and so, as I'm thinking about that, I'm wondering what advantages you feel that you've had because you've had parents grow up and be born in different countries.

Carrie Behar: 29:04

That's a really good question.

Carrie Behar: 29:06

I think I had the advantage of growing up with two languages at home, so I grew up speaking Polish to my mum and English to my dad, which is just I don't know.

Carrie Behar: 29:14

Having different words, different sort of broader vocabulary to describe things I think is really really valuable, and we also I was fortunate as a child we traveled to Poland most years and had lots of family lived out there and who would come and visit us and stay with us as well. So I guess I got to see maybe a broader range of kind of how people live than just what was going on in my little, my little bubble in London. You know this was when pre-fall of the Berlin Wall and Eastern Europe was quite a different place and you know there were some challenges to life there that I think I was able to kind of witness and understand a bit sooner than I would have done otherwise and I think that made me really again sort of care about I didn't know it was that at the time, but kind of sustainable urban development and seeing how Poland has changed in the time of my life and how the UK has changed and some of the good things and some of the less good things. I just think it's just broadened my horizons.

Darren Evans: 30:10

Interestingly, you mentioned about the Berlin Wall. Lots of people have forgotten or don't even know that that happened. When I think about my children, I don't think I've spent too long teaching them about that and the significance about that. But from your point of view, can you just delve into that a little bit and just say what life was like and what travel was like and what the conversations were like in your family before the wall came down and then what you remember it being like after it came down and how that impacted and and also maybe how that relates to the way that people live and the types of buildings that that were constructed?

Carrie Behar: 30:48

yeah, so I was pretty young, I was six when the Berlin Wall came down, so so it's a kind of distant past for me. But certainly traveling for family to travel from Poland to the UK before that was extremely difficult. They used to have to get written letters of invitation from us via the embassy and permission and some occasions when they were stopped and even at the UK immigration and sent back was really challenging. None of my mum's family were able to come to my parents' wedding, which obviously was you know, I don't remember that, but devastating for my parents to not have that and in terms of the kind of how people lived.

Carrie Behar: 31:24

I guess in the post-war period a lot of mass housing was built in Poland, very tall sort of housing blocks of perhaps not the best quality housing, but at the same time there was this amazing energy and people were, as the sort of economy there picked up and grew and developed, a lot of people were able to sort of buy land and build their own homes and there is still a culture there of doing that sort of buying your little plot and building your own house, which I think is quite different to how we live in the UK where we have this very old housing stock and challenges of kind of retrofit and things like that.

Carrie Behar: 32:04

So I think the housing stock was different. I think something the way Poland has developed has been quite car-based. I think it's a very large country with a relatively small population, so it doesn't have that. It follows perhaps more of a sort of American urban sprawl model than we have done in the UK. I think, because we're quite a small country, because we're quite tight on space, I think that has played to our favour in terms of sort of investing in public transport and enabling sort of more sustainable urban life.

Darren Evans: 32:35

Have you seen much of a shift and change in Poland from family that you've got there towards more of a sustainable approach to construction?

Carrie Behar: 32:45

I have to say I'm not closely involved in construction in Poland. I think because of the climate there are definitely some differences in the way homes are built which are probably quite positive in terms of kind of resilience. I mean the housing there is very well insulated. They have cold, snowy winters every year, so most homes have kind of pitched roofs in order to, you know, for the snow to slide off them, and the sort of idea of having just a sort of single glazed, flimsy window pane is out of the question. Even older buildings have sort of multiple layers of secondary glazing and kind of very thick solid walls. So I think in that way the vernacular and the contemporary architecture in Poland is better suited to that climate. I think for us, because we had a moderate and temperate climate for so long, we've been able to kind of get away with having slightly poor quality housing in a way, or certainly not energy inefficient housing, shall we say.

Darren Evans: 33:42

Definitely, and so this kind of changed gears slightly. Now, the company that you work for at the moment we discussed is B Corp. Fairly recently, three years, I think, you said- that's right.

Carrie Behar: 33:56

So, yeah, about three or four years ago we became a B Corp, b Corporation. So that is a certification that proves our position as a responsible, ethical and mission-led business. So we're currently going through the process of becoming recertified as a B Corp. So one of the things that I really admire about B Corp is that you can't just get it and then have it forever. It's tough to get that status. We had to really tighten up some of our systems and processes and sort of understanding around how we operate as a business. We had to embed the UN SDGs the Sustainable Development Goals within our company deeds or kind of constitution. But even though once you've got that, you have to recertify every three years and you have to get a 10% improvement on your score from the previous time, that's right. So we're currently just going through that process now and really hopeful that we'll be recertified.

Darren Evans: 34:53

And you're leading that process, aren't you? That recertification Is that right? You're leading, that's right.

Carrie Behar: 34:56

So I'm working with a team of colleagues to kind of review the different improvement areas and the goals that we've set ourselves around things like our customers, our community, our environment, our community, our environment.

Darren Evans: 35:20

Identify where we think we can make improvements and try and make those improvements and then submit, pull together and submit the evidence to B Corp so that and I'm the same as you. I love the fact that you need to recertify every three years, because to me it means something as opposed to just doing something once. It's just a snapshot in time and you don't need to worry about all of those things that you promised to do before. Yeah, I love that. I think that's great.

Carrie Behar: 35:49

I think maybe B Corp has had a little bit of bad press recently with some organizations becoming certified B Corps that perhaps others questioned whether that was valid. But I think B Corp has responded really well to this through adding sort of extra questions, extra levels of kind of scrutiny and due diligence to kind of ensure that only really companies that are practicing what they preach are able to get that that sort of seal of approval.

Darren Evans: 36:16

And I've seen that there have been organisations that have gone and got the B Corp certification in year one but then by the time that year four has come up because you're recertifying in year three, they've not got that certification anymore. I've seen that. I hope that's not us. No, no, no, and I don year three. They've not got that certification anymore.

Carrie Behar: 36:32

I've I've seen that, yeah, I've seen that. I hope that's not us. No, no, no and I don't.

Darren Evans: 36:35

I don't think that it will be, but I think that the reason I'm mentioning that is because that's a testament to the fact that they are true to the values that they have, and I think that the fact that someone has identified, or a group of people have identified, an area of improvement. I think that that's a good thing, because B Corp is not going to be perfect in and of itself. They're going to be on a journey, like we're all on a journey, and and that's that's great, so I don't think that the baby should be thrown out with the bath water no, no, I completely agree.

Carrie Behar: 37:04

I think, um, it's a really valuable process for us and it's not just about scoring points and getting this logo that we can stick on our website. It actually really helps us to kind of interrogate how we operate as a business, to set a vision of kind of where we'd like to be in the future and then to start to work towards that. No one's perfect on day one. You know we're not doing that. You know you could always do more right, but I think it's.

Darren Evans: 37:25

You know we're really aware and honest about that and we're using it as a way to kind of help us on that journey definitely so, speaking about not being perfect, uh, but progressing, what projects have you worked on recently that you felt you know we've progressed on this so well, from maybe 2011, 2007? There's a few things.

Carrie Behar: 37:47

But maybe I'll talk a bit about something we're doing as an organization and that's been around our carbon footprint and sort of carbon accountancy. So we in 2019, we joined others in the industry in declaring climate emergency and really committing to becoming a carbon neutral or a net zero organisation by 2030. And so we joined others in making that commitment and I'm sure, as you know, as others would hopefully honestly say, we then kind of have been on a journey, understanding what that really means and what's involved in that. So the first step in doing that was starting to measure our carbon footprint as an organization through our operations, because we're a professional services company, we don't manufacture stuff, we don't make stuff, we don't burn fossil fuels directly, but even so, through our um procurement, through our supply chain, through our office premises, we are contributing to climate change through the carbon emissions that we are connected to our operations.

Carrie Behar: 38:48

So we've uh developed a tool to for measuring our carbon impact and uh, I've been on done some work on kind of refining that, which has been really it's just been really interesting to see where the carbon is coming from. And particularly, we've identified that 90% of our carbon emissions is connected to our procurement. So procurement of products but also services, so some of the subcontractors that we use, but also some of the things that we're buying, so things like recruitment services, um, legal services, office supplies, catering, stationery. So the next step, kind of having identified those things, is now around starting to engage with our supply chain to see if we can, I guess, bring people on that journey with us and find other organisations to work with who are also committed to decarbonising and to show that we can try and sort of bring down our emissions through bringing down those of our supply chains.

Carrie Behar: 39:45

I have personally found that really interesting and it feels very worthwhile to do and it's quite challenging though, because it's made me well it's not made me realize, but I always feel it's not just about carbon. You know there's other environmental and social factors, but how, when you try and take all these factors into account, how do you know what the best decision is? You know even just something as simple like, I don't know, buying paper clips or something so you could choose the lowest carbon option. But also, what if we switch to one that's higher carbon but the organization is a B Corp, so they're doing positive things for the community? So all these little kind of interconnected variables and it's that that I think I love about sustainability it's so interconnected.

Darren Evans: 40:27

Absolutely right, and there is not one thing that you can do that solves the whole problem.

Carrie Behar: 40:33

Exactly, and I'm really fortunate I work with a great bunch of colleagues who have real subject matter expertise in so many things. So in carbon footprinting that's one of the services that we offer our clients. So to be able to work with those colleagues to do it on our own operations is a real, real privilege. The same on the B Corp. The other thing that's been really, really interesting for me and that is maybe worth noting is because of the nature of the work we do. Our biggest impact is actually through our project work and not through our kind of organisational footprint. So whilst that is really important and we are committed to reducing it and being part of that sort of decarbonisation industry-wide, really what we want to do is make sure that we create the most positive impact through our project works. So we work in our major infrastructure projects to take the carbon out of the products that they are supplying and roll that out across the rail infrastructure for example, what type of projects do you work on personally?

Carrie Behar: 41:32

So I work in the master planning team in my kind of consultancy work. So a fairly recent piece of work was on working with Meridian Water. So it's a large master plan in North East London and there we developed the environmental sustainability strategy which set out a sort of vision for how this 10,000 home development could be a really sustainable place and sort of stitched into the city. And we took our inspiration from Kate Raworth's Donut Economics, which I think is a framing that I find so useful for kind of communicating what we mean by sustainable development. So taking this idea of there being a social foundation, a sort of minimum social infrastructure that we need to provide to enable people to live comfortably and healthily and safely, but that that needs to be delivered within the ecological limits of our planet and the space within that, the kind of donor or the ring that is where society can flourish and the economy can thrive. So we use that framing of donor economics to develop the uh, a series of uh targets around carbon, uh resources and biodiversity, and then alongside that was a series of social foundations around kind of community and resilience and health and well-being, and developed on the back of that a set of targets, strategies, objectives and then worked with the meridian Water Team and with Enfield Council to start to implement that and embed it in their operations and the sort of phasing of the master plan. So that's been really interesting. And another one I've been working on with on the Old Oak West master plan with OPDC, the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation, and again it's looking at the kind of strategic sustainability moves and spatial moves that can embed sustainability into another very large sort of new urban regeneration project.

Carrie Behar: 43:21

But there's something that's been a particular kind of focus of interest is around tall buildings.

Carrie Behar: 43:26

I mean, that's something that's, you know, something important that's happening in London around us at the moment. The skyline is going higher and higher and higher and what we were really interested in what does that actually mean in terms of the carbon emissions, in terms of the health and well-being of the occupants, in terms of the environmental conditions that are created, both inside through living in a very tall building and having to construct it and service it and maintain it, and then also the space between the buildings and the impact that tall buildings have on public realm in terms of things like overshadowing wind corridors and so on. So I work with my engineering team to carry out some modeling and and studies around that and to try and then work really closely and iteratively with the architects to try and optimize the kind of massing of the building blocks, of the streetscape, to optimize for health, well-being, low carbon, which is is challenging but fascinating what principles would you say you have learned from working on those projects, specifically with the super high rise buildings?

Darren Evans: 44:26

that you say that it is worth considering for someone that's listening or watching this.

Carrie Behar: 44:31

So I think one of the questions that comes up really is about tipping points. Is there a threshold above which it is or isn't sustainable? So if you think about just intuitively, we know that a terrace is more efficient than a detached home. And then if you build that into a block of flats, again there's some efficiencies there because of the sort of surface area to volume ratio and the kind of shared infrastructure and amenities. So you'd think that as you densify it gets more and more and more efficient. And that's true to a point.

Carrie Behar: 45:03

But there then also comes a point roughly around 20 stories, but it kind of depends on various factors where actually the additional resources required to construct and maintain those buildings sort of pushes it in the other direction. So, for example, buildings above a certain height will require additional stair cores for fire safety. Once you get to very tall, sort of 20, 30 stories, you wouldn't be opening your windows. So you would probably need, you would definitely need mechanical ventilation, but you might also need an air conditioning system.

Carrie Behar: 45:34

It's timber again. I mean timber at the moment is very challenging in the uk but theoretically it is possible to build high rise in timber. But there comes a point again where actually structurally you would want to use probably steel or concrete, which comes typically has higher embodied carbon and, interestingly, everything we do sort of comes back to that mansion block typology being something that is just really sustainable in terms of providing enough density for some economies of scale around carbon and material use, enough density to have a kind of thriving urban town or village, or enough people living there to support shops and businesses, town or village, or, you know, enough people living there to support bit shops and businesses, but and but, also a sort of uh, physical form or massing that doesn't disturb the public realm or sort of negatively influence it too much in terms of things like wind, in terms of things like overshadowing, so that I know it's. I don't know if it's a cliche, but that kind of eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve story building does seem to work well.

Darren Evans: 46:32

And what about when you factor in things like overheating?

Carrie Behar: 46:34

Overheating. I don't know if it's necessarily to do with height. I think overheating there's a few things. Orientation plays a huge part in overheating, depending on where in the world you are, but in the UK you know south-facing. You get a lot of the solar gains that way. So things like ensuring that you have sufficient shading and using horizontal shading on south-facing facades and the vertical shading on the east and west facades and perhaps fewer windows on the north facade so that it's well-initiated, you're getting less heat loss, can really help with overheating. I think the other thing on overheating is adequate ventilation and air change. So dual aspect properties better and you know often planning requirements or sort of local policy tries to prioritise or limit the amount of single aspect dwellings that are constructed, which I think is a really good thing. So I think I don't know how that maps to height. I think you probably still can have very tall buildings that don't overheat if they're well designed.

Darren Evans: 47:38

But again, it's just it needs to be considered yeah, I think the link that I was making really was um unopenable windows from a certain height and that having a an impact really on um, on, on overheating, how that, how that blends in. But yeah, this is just a question that popped in my head as you were talking.

Darren Evans: 47:59

I know that outside of the UK places I'm thinking about Malaysia and Dubai, where they have extremely high buildings and the climate is very, very different to what it is here. I've seen some innovative things around Brisele to try and mitigate against that. But yeah, that was.

Carrie Behar: 48:18

I think that's right. So there's the overheating challenge with very tall buildings, which can be mitigated through shading, through efficient air conditioning systems, but it's again something that maybe isn't so familiar to us working in the UK because we haven't had a culture of extreme heat or tall buildings, so it's something that we're still learning. I think the other thing that's important is access to open space. There comes a point above which balconies are not practical, not comfortable, not safe, and then also a density at which you would need an awful lot of public realm to kind of provide sufficient green space for those people you know, particularly if you've got families of children living in a high rise who would need access to a playground, a park, green infrastructure, leisure facilities. So one of the challenges is around how to create that really high quality public realm. Challenges is around how to create that really high quality public realm, and we've been working very closely with the landscape designers and also we've been working on the kind of integrated water management strategy to create kind of what we call kind of layered landscapes and multifunctional areas. So it can be it's flood resistant resilience, but it's also a playground, but it's also biodiversity and it also operates as an outdoor classroom. You know there's those spaces that can kind of provide multiple functions so you can deal with that sort of density.

Carrie Behar: 49:40

The other thing I think with very tall buildings is the overshadowing over parts of the public realm. So you're, so we've been. Our work has helped inform kind of how parks and parklets and green spaces are positioned so that the overshading doesn't sort of impact their use so effectively. You know you don't want to have overshadowing on the bit of the park that's open with the benches for half the day or maybe in the summer that's OK, but kind of in the winter you don't. So we've developed some tools and used various pieces of modelling software to start to measure and optimise that.

Darren Evans: 50:17

Carrie, I think we're now ready to go into the segment of the podcast that we call the Demolition Zone.

Carrie Behar: 50:23

Yeah, okay, this is where myths get debunked.

Darren Evans: 50:26

So are you ready to go? I'm ready to go, let's go. Welcome back. We are now in the demolition zone. Carrie, you have built two towers. One tower is colourful and, I would say, is just over a foot high, single blocks, and the other one, I say, is about six inches, all from the wooden, coloured blocks. What do these two towers represent?

Carrie Behar: 50:52

Okay, so the two towers represent the myth that I'm going to bust, which is that a sustainable building is more expensive than an unsustainable building, and this idea that sustainability costs.

Carrie Behar: 51:08

So what I've got here is my kind of of basic building, which is the low one, the low one and then I've got our fantastic kind of bells and whistles, sustainable, high performance building, which is colorful and taller and more exciting and better, I hope, and so at the moment they're set up to represent the myth in that, if you, the-axis is cost, so you've got this tall, expensive building, but actually what I'd like to do is knock that top off to show that actually a really sustainable building doesn't need to cost more than just a basic one Great, okay.

Darren Evans: 51:45

So before we go knocking anything down, why would you say the sustainable building doesn't cost any more, what needs to be done? Because it's not. You're true in what you're saying, but there needs to be a specific approach for it not to cost more.

Carrie Behar: 52:00

That's right and I think it's just a simplification and a generalization. That is and I think that's the misconception that I'd like to bust. So a piece of work that we did recently looking at a large master plan development site and in that we put together a set of sustainabilityal and we rented, rated each of the requirements in terms of whether they were cost neutral, cost negative or whether they actually added cost. So what we, what that work found, is that actually there's a real spread across that and there's a lot of sustainability things that will actually save you money. So, for example, take that the relationship between using less material and lower carbon emissions. You know, if you can take out some material for example, removing unnecessary finishes on interiors and and fit outs, or, you know, slimming down the um structural system so you don't have such, you know, not over specifying you can actually save, save money.

Carrie Behar: 53:08

Um, there are also situations where something is cost neutral or where it's just a case of doing good design or kind of smart thinking and delivering things in a way that really maximise the value of the intervention.

Carrie Behar: 53:21

And then, yes, there are some things that just do cost a little bit more money. You know, specifying some very high performance rated buildings or perhaps the most efficient technology, sometimes does add a cost. But really when you look at it kind of holistically across the whole of the project or the development, what we find is that actually it doesn't need to cost more, and that's kind of what I want to dispel. And actually if I can add to that and this is about cost but if we think of value in its full sense, I think that's where really the sort of the case for sustainability is even um stronger. So, for example, one of the I've got some stats but researchers found that retrofit of the UK housing stock would deliver over a billion pounds of savings to the NHS. So things like that, that kind of wider value around the health and wellbeing, the immunity, the kind of social or the biodiversity impact and the impact beyond the red line boundary of whatever the project is, can really, you know, tip it in the other direction. I love that, do you?

Darren Evans: 54:26

want to bust that myth.

Carrie Behar: 54:27

Yeah, okay. So I'm going to try and do it so that I just knock the top off so that they're kind of even, but it might just be that the whole thing collapses, so we'll see what happens, here we go. Ready, steady and.

Darren Evans: 54:39

Love it. There you go, there we go. Now they're even.

Carrie Behar: 54:42

They're even.

Darren Evans: 54:45

So with about two or three swipes of the left hand, the buildings are now even to symbolise that the costs actually for sustainable buildings are not more. Totally agree with what you're saying. We find the same thing, that the costs can actually be less. But it's the approach, always the approach. Love that stat that you threw out with reference to the NHS. Could you just repeat that again?

Carrie Behar: 55:07

Yes, £1.36 billion of NHS savings through retrofit of the UK housing stock.

Darren Evans: 55:13

Significant. Kerry, it's been great having you here on the podcast, really appreciate your wisdom, appreciate you delving into things that you have experienced in the past and the present. Just looking to the future now the past and the present. Just looking to the future now. And if there was one thing that you wish that people would understand and embrace within the industry, one piece of advice, what would that be?

Carrie Behar: 55:40

It's not within the industry, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Carrie Behar: 55:43

I wish people would understand the benefit and the value of car-free living.

Carrie Behar: 55:50

I think it's something that I'm very passionate about at the moment and that sort of it's not saying that you can't drive a car ever and I think there's been a sort of politicization and polarization of this debate through various kind of fake news really around things like the 15-minute city and the idea that it's a sort of ploy to trick people out of their cars, but really some of the sort of just the the benefits to your health, the benefits to sustainability, the benefits to how you feel and how quickly you can get around, and sort of.

Carrie Behar: 56:22

If you think about how much space in our public realm was taken up by car parking and if think what amazing things could be done instead with that space, how many trees we could plant, how many playgrounds um, parks, gardens, other amenities, you know water, biodiversity there was just so much amazing stuff that you could, you could do with that space and I think it's disproportionately impacts the way our urban cities work at the moment and I think just going back to the experience that you've had from childhood being able to be independent as well, being able to go on public transport and catch up with friends and have these experiences independent of a car has really been beneficial.

Carrie Behar: 57:03

Yeah, I think so, and I think it's the people that often say that. Well, but once you have kids, it's just impossible. But I've got two little kids and no car car. And, yes, sometimes we hire a zip car when we need to carry stuff around or transport them somewhere, but otherwise we get on, get on our bikes, get on the bus and we just get on with it and, I think, the great thing with that.

Darren Evans: 57:19

So I grew up without a car, lived or grew up in Bristol, and the transport system in Bristol is nowhere near as advanced as what it is in London. And, yeah, I used to walk, ride a bike, catch a bus, and the thing that I benefited from that is same as you independence You're able to navigate yourself around different places instead of my parents dropping me off here or dropping me off there and not knowing how to get from point A to point B. And being independent. So, yeah, I'm with you.

Carrie Behar: 57:51

And if more people did that, then it would free up space on the road so that the people who really do need to move in a car because of mobility need or because you're transporting large items or something like that so that those journeys could be much quicker, much more efficient, maybe in the future move towards kind of you know, automated vehicles and, just you know, less congestion and traffic. And you could tell it was rainy this morning.

Darren Evans: 58:15

That's great. Well, carrie really loved having you here as a guest on the show. Appreciate your time, your wisdom and your thoughts. It's been a pleasure having you.

Carrie Behar: 58:24

Thank you, it's been a real pleasure to be here. Thanks.

Darren Evans: 58:41

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