As is customary, we are delighted to introduce our newest member of the team, Iona Norton, on our blog. Iona is Housing Energy & Sustainability Manager at the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and has been working with us at DG Cities on decarbonisation projects. Here, she tells us about her background, the experience of moving from the private to public sector, and her reflections on their different challenges and priorities.
It has been six months since I became a Public Practice Associate. This is the programme that led me to the position of Housing Energy and Sustainability Manager at the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and incidentally, into DG Cities…
Public Practice recruits placemaking professionals to forward-thinking local authorities. The programme aims to increase built environment skills in the public sector, while easing the transition for private sector professionals that want to work in a local authority. They match applicants with positions in local authorities that best match their skills, and then organise a learning and development programme that runs alongside day-to-day work in the new role.
I’m a chartered mechanical engineer, with a background in energy strategy, building physics, building services engineering, and specifically, in heat network and heat pump design. In my previous role, I undertook detailed design of energy centres for large masterplans, contributed to best practice heat pump design guidance and worked as a resident engineer during construction.
I wasn’t at all sure how this experience would translate to my new role, or really, what the new role would turn out to be! But I was hoping that the programme would teach me more about the political, economic and social context in which my designs were being built.
In Greenwich, we have approximately 22,000 social rent homes, approximately 13% of which are considered to be in fuel poverty (and this figure is increasing). My role is to develop and deliver a strategy to decarbonise these homes to meet the Borough’s carbon neutral targets, drawing on my private sector experience. It has therefore been interesting to consider some of the differences between my previous and current role – some of these are perhaps obvious, but have really hit home…
As an engineer, a typical project existed inside a red-line boundary set by the client (what building, where, how big, how much). We then had the freedom to design the buildings and systems however we thought best to achieve the perfect outcome within that boundary. As a client in the public sector, the problem is ‘how to spread limited jam across a lot of toast’ (while trying to understand exactly what kind of toast you have, and trying to stop the toast being too cold, too hot, or get mouldy). The focus must be less on the perfect solution for one site, and more on the best outcome for a whole Borough.
The time for a design process is a luxury, but it is increasingly important – especially for existing buildings. Council housing asset management has historically been focused on reactive repairs and maintenance, and much of this work hasn’t required the need for the iterative design process I’m used to. However, the issues of sustainability, fuel poverty, overheating and damp and mould present a complex set of challenges that can’t be solved without simultaneous consideration of building fabric, heating systems and behaviour change. This requires a significant change in asset repair and maintenance programmes, and puts pressure on programmes, supply chains and cost.
Many decisions are not just about the right design, or the right technology, but in what order they should be implemented, and when. A new boiler can make short term carbon savings, reduce fuel bills and solve an immediate repair problem, but doesn’t make a home heat-pump ready and probably isn’t the right long-term climate solution.
“As a client in the public sector, the problem is ‘how to spread limited jam across a lot of toast’ (while trying to understand exactly what kind of toast you have, and trying to stop the toast being too cold, too hot, or get mouldy). ”
It feels like I have entered this sector just as it is being reinvented and is making a huge shift - not just in technology and design, but also in outlook and strategic priorities, while set against an uncertain economic climate and cost of living crisis. Hopefully we can work out how to get at least a few bits of toast just right.