Environmental and social changes are accelerating at blistering paces, but to what extent is industry adapting to meet the sustainability and resilience challenges presented by our buildings and the wider built environment sector? Given the outsize impacts of this sector, is our future survivable without radical change? Do we need new construction or refurbishment and retrofit? What is being done at the forefronts of the professions and industry?
As our planet’s climate and natural systems are unravelling at unprecedented rates, the resilience of our buildings, towns and cities and the sustainability of our ways of living and working – perhaps even our survivability -- are under real threat. The science is clear: avoiding the worst impacts for our planet, ourselves and our future generations means immediate, radical changes need to be made to the way we design, build and operate our built environments. This is a once-in-a-generation challenge, yet the opportunity presented is enormous: the potential for social and economic benefits of a ‘moonshot’ effort to address our sustainability and resilience challenges is virtually immeasurable.

Professionals in the built environment sector – including developers, designers, engineers, constructors, asset operators and managers – and financiers, policymakers and others are increasingly aware of how rapidly realities are changing. In a sector notorious for being slow to adapt and innovate, momentum toward real, meaningful change is suddenly accelerating.

This talk will review the changes, trends and emerging pressures that create this new reality for industry, and it will examine what needs to be done to address these unprecedented challenges in construction and retrofit, and what is being done at the leading edge of innovation in industry.