KTP funding success - Dr Kerstin Sailer

Dr Kerstin Sailer, Lecturer in Complex Buildings at the Bartlett Space Syntax programme, won a grant from Innovate UK (former: Technology Strategy Board) for a two-year 'Knowledge Transfer Partnership' project, where the Bartlett will collaborate with Mott MacDonald Limited. She is principal investigator of the project and supported by Peter McLennan from the School of Environment, Energy and Resources at the Bartlett.

The full project amount is £154k of which £77k is a contribution from Innovate UK and the remaining £77k will be sponsored by the industry partner Mott MacDonald. The project will run from 2015-2017.

The project aims at the development and delivery of an ‘action driven design’ (ADD) toolkit that will dynamically connect evidence gathered from operational buildings in use, to inform the future early stage design briefing processes of architectural and engineering design teams. User feedback data will be gathered in a more evidence based and systematic manner than the typical industry Post Occupancy Evaluation can achieve. This includes feedback from all parts of the supply chain / stakeholder groups – clients, product manufacturers and sub-contractors, and will make use of a data-driven, iterative and social media supported process. The project will be supported by a series of focus groups with stakeholders in the industry. The ultimate goal of Project Arête (named after the Greek goddess of virtue) is to disrupt the orthodox choice making processes of designers at briefing stage to more fundamentally embrace techniques that promote buildings as drivers of occupant ergonomics, efficiency, profitability and joy to be in.

Project partners - Mott MacDonald

Mott MacDonald is a uniquely diverse practice of consultant engineers delivering extremely high profile projects across the world, as they strive to meet some of the world’s greatest challenges. Mott MacDonald is one of the world’s largest employee-owned companies, so their consultants not only provide the services they sell, they are the owners of the company and have a real stake in the success of the company. Their aspiration as company is to deliver prestigious, life changing and innovative projects to create a business that they are all proud to work in. They have an incredibly diverse range of people working towards common goals, and they set new standards of excellence. For Mott MacDonald sustainability is about using their own ingenuity to deliver lasting value for their clients and for the communities where they work. It is about crossing the boundaries of conventional thinking to deliver efficiencies and unleash innovation in our solutions, advancing sustained economic, social and environmental well-being.