About the event

This session from Reusefully will explore the latest circular economy thinking in the built environment including the opportunities and challenges. It will provide examples of projects that are starting to make the most of circularity and highlight the crucial role of designers within a collaborative project team.

Whether reuse is in-situ or offsite, the opportunities to exploit the concept of buildings as material banks will be highlighted. The training will touch on the newly emerging planning regimes which are being introduced in London and starting to be considered elsewhere in the UK, and look at the ecosystem of standards developing across the country and Europe.

The session will look at the drivers for circularity and reuse, whether economic, social, environmental or political; the processes to go through to establish the possibilities on any given project, and examples of how these have manifested in real projects.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this session, participants will be able to recognise:

• Key aspects of the latest circular economy thinking in the built environment and drivers for circularity and reuse
• Opportunities to exploit buildings as material banks
• The planning regimes which are being introduced to encourage circularity and reuse
• Processes to establish the potential for circularity and reuse on any given project

About the speaker

Dr Katherine Adams, Co-founder and Director - Reusefully

Katherine has worked in the area of construction resource efficiency for nearly 25 years, where she has been instrumental in shaping the construction industry to achieve high levels of diversion of waste from landfill and moving towards a more circular way of thinking. She has extensive experience of pre-deconstruction audits using a robust methodology, and has been responsible for developing waste reporting including the online system Smartwaste whilst working at BRE.

She works across the industry at both a sector and project level, developing resource, waste and circular strategies, as well as participating in European Standards and providing advice to Government. Katherine’s PhD studied how a circular economy could be embedded in the building sector, and she works with many construction sector bodies to progress circularity in the built environment