2025 Study Day - Speakers
Main Stage Speakers
​​Crawford Wright - Head of Architecture & Design - Department for Education
10 questions on Climate Change and Net Zero in the Education Estate
​Crawford is Head of Architecture and Design at the Department for Education where he leads a multi-disciplinary team responsible for the design and construction standards for all state schools in England. Crawford has been leading school construction programmes including Academies, UTCs, Studio Schools and Free schools for over 15 years. Previous to this he worked in local authority capital programmes including museums, concert halls and libraries. Crawford is a chartered architect and has a background in social housing design and management. Currently he leads on developing zero carbon new school buildings and developing strategies for retrofitting the school estate.
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Iain Murray - Director of Policy - CIPFA​​
Financial challenges at a strategic level and impact of local govt reorganisation and impacts for net zero
Iain is CIPFA’s Director of Public Financial Management leading CIPFA’s policy, public affairs and standard setting work.
He is a CIPFA member and has over 20 years’ experience of working in public financial management. Having started his career in local public audit.
Iain has worked with bodies across all aspects of local and national service delivery in both an audit and advisory capacity. He is well versed in public finance and public service delivery.
Working with public sector organisations has always been a conscious choice and he is proud to continue this work with CIPFA in the UK and internationally.
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Marina Robertson - Group Managing Director - Acivico Group
Birmingham City Council's property latco: behaviour transformation in adopting Net Zero
Marina has been serving the sustainability profession for over 30 years, in work, volunteering and academia.
She is passionate about the role the built environment plays in affecting social change and in the sector’s response to the
changing climate. She is a creative and energetic thinker capable of translating vision and strategy into tangible results.
Marina has held a variety of senior executive, operational and transformation roles in regeneration, housing, economic development, property, and capital programme delivery in the public and private sectors where she led award winning services. Marina forges lasting formal and informal collaborations across the sector that enable high quality, sustainable and innovative service solutions, delivering value for the stretched public purse and transforming people’s experience of their environment.
A Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, Marina believes that technical expertise should be coupled with pragmatism to create governance frameworks that support good decision making, at
pace.
Marina is a strong advocate of building skills for the future and the role we all play in promoting and creating a culture of technical excellence to expertly advise and inform the sector. Although Marina believes that there is some way to go in addressing capacity
and capability scarcity to help tackle the societal challenges of climate change, she is also optimistic of what can be achieved through coalitions and consensus.
For Marina, diversity is an organisational super-power. A strong advocate of the positive role under-represented groups can play in
addressing capacity in the sector you will frequently see and hear Marina talk passionately about opportunities for mentoring, planning
for the future and levelling up the skills gap.
In her spare time, Marina is a proud Vice-Chair of the Board of Waltham Forest Housing Association.
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Ian Keeling - Building Services Associate - Cundall
Are heat pumps really better than gas boilers?
There is a lot of understandable political and social agitation around NZC and the climate emergency. In our haste to make progress, are we making short term decisions that are setting back our long-term strategies? This session will take a critical look at how we are using heat pumps and will ask whether there is still a place for gas boilers in our journey to NZC​
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Ian is a Building Services Associate at Cundall, a Member of CIBSE and Chartered Engineer with over 10 years engineering consultancy experience within the education sector. He has developed a specialist knowledge in Net-Zero Carbon school design and has been heavily involved in various Department for Education funded R&D Projects including the GenZero Concept School, Energy Pods Research & Innovation Project and New Model Schools.
Ian recently worked alongside the DfE to develop and refine their Output Specification 25 Technical Standards and has experience as a DfE Technical Advisor, though much of his time in practice is spent developing practical design solutions for his various contractor clients.
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Nick Bishop - Heritage Director - Avalon Planning & Heritage
How can Conservation align with Net Zero to deliver Resilience?
Nick is a commercial heritage consultant with fifteen years’ experience across the public and private sectors, including heritage roles as Historic Places Adviser at Historic England, at planning consultancy Lichfields’, and at Local Plan specialists Urban Practitioners (now part of Allies and Morrison).
Nick and his team advise a wide range of clients on alterations to heritage assets, including listed building conversions, extensions and retrofits, and development in Conservation Areas. Climate Change mitigation and adaptation forms an increasingly prominent consideration as the Heritage sector embraces the move towards Net Zero.
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Amira Babu Faith - Senior Design Manager - Mace
Helen Brydson - Regional Director - Atkins Réalis
The current project and route to NZC both from the client and contractor perspectives
Amira is a Senior Design Manager with over a decade of experience within the public sector. Amira’s experience spans from concept design to handover and includes education, commercial offices, healthcare, and specialist care project types.
Amira holds a BA in Architecture and Landscape Architecture from the University of Sheffield and an MSc in Construction Economics and Management from UCL. Since 2023, Amira has been the lead design manager on the ‘European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast’ new Headquarters in Reading, UK. on behalf of Mace, Amira’s role has been to facilitate the development of a high-quality building while driving the Net Zero Carbon targets for the project.
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Helen obtained a BSc (hons) in Geography from Durham University before entering the industry to become a chartered Project Manager Surveyor with the RICS. Helen has previously held positions on the RICS Project Management Professional Groups Board, the RICS Construction Journal Editorial Committee and the AtkinsRealis National Project Management Technical Group. Helen has actively delivered projects across a variety of scales, types and sectors including Commercial Office, Education, and Custodial during her 15+ year career, which enables her to share a diverse range of experience when advising Clients and leading multi-disciplinary project teams. Helen predominantly focusses on the delivery of large and / or complex schemes and is currently the AtkinsRealis Project Director for AtkinsRealis who are providing multi-disciplinary Consultancy services for the ECMWF project.
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Alex Gee - Senior Consultant - CIPFA & SPACES President
Alex is a strategic director with experience working across the public, private and international sectors. He has spent the last 18 years in senior roles, leading and transforming multi-disciplinary teams into successful commercial operations.
For the last 10 years, Alex has been Operations Director at the Norse Group, with responsibility for the successful delivery of multi-disciplinary property services, leading two Joint Venture companies: NPS Peterborough Ltd with Peterborough City Council, Norse Evolve Ltd with the London Borough of Waltham Forest; and Norse Archaeology.
In addition to his responsibilities in Peterborough, Alex has spent the last 18months as Interim Head of Property at Cambridgeshire County Council, working closely with the Energy Investment Unit supporting the implementation of zero carbon projects.
Prior to the Norse Group, Alex was Head of Project Co-Ordination for UNEP-WCMC leading on the commercial viability of international environmental projects that ranged from preserving International Protected Areas to Climate Change, working across Institutions such as the UN, the EU and International NGOs.
Alex specialises in delivering strategic projects that require multi-partner collaborations to facilitate change and building high performing teams that focus on delivering commercial benefits.