Student-industry partnerships tackle complex business challenges in UCL Sustainability Lab

A new initiative that connects industry experts with students across UCL provides a sustainability-focused platform for impactful collaborations to tackle sustainability challenges facing business.

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Collaborations between academia and industry are helping to fuel progress towards the SDG targets. A new initiative conceptualised and founded by MBA student Tom Weston (UCL School of Management), provides a platform to connect UCL students and industry partners in collaborations that are helping to make business more sustainable.

Tom’s vision for UCL Sustainability Lab is to create opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students across UCL’s 11 faculties to collaborate with companies and delve into the complex issues surrounding sustainable innovations and help to develop strategic business models to deliver them.

Based in the UCL School of Management, the Lab draws participants from a range of subjects at UCL, including urban planning, business analytics, law, civil engineering, sciences and the humanities. The industry-student collaborations are undertaken as an extra-curricular activity, complementing the students’ courses. They typically last six months and include regular discussion meetings, presentations and networking events.

Sixty students are currently collaborating in one of 13 projects across six partner organisations, including Mott MacDonald, a global engineering company, and EthicsGrade, a company that assesses the sustainability credentials of businesses.

Students carry out research and analysis on a defined topic in collaboration with stakeholders from partner organisations and present their recommendations in a final report to the industry representatives.

Current projects include collaborations with EthicsGrade to explore topics including AI regulation, and energy and computational efficiency in IT systems. Three projects are underway in collaboration with Mott MacDonald and the Institute of Structural Engineers with a focus on the built environment. The projects are exploring the impact of the supply chain on: biodiversity; the societal costs and benefits of construction; and the impact of building height on operational and embodied carbon. 

“The Lab’s collaborations focus on co-creation practices that generate positive impact, drive solutions and develop knowledge.”

In one project, UCL students have developed a methodology for assessing the impact of construction materials on the natural environment, to help reverse the negative impact on biodiversity during construction processes. Their recommendations include a three-step approach for companies to become ‘nature-positive’: creating an industry overview (to establish key stakeholders, market trends, and sustainable initiatives); mapping the value chain of the material from extraction to the construction site; and making a detailed assessment of direct and indirect impacts on nature from each stage of the value chain so that improvements can be made to help construction companies become nature-positive.

“Bringing together the team members' different disciplinary knowledge, skills and diverse backgrounds helps the projects to deliver positive impact, through co-created solutions,” Tom says. “We are encouraging a holistic and systems thinking approach to the discussions, while working towards informing improvements our partners are making to their work and interventions.”

“The Lab’s collaborations focus on co-creation practices that generate positive impact, drive solutions and develop knowledge,” he adds. “This will ensure that sustainability approaches deliver consistent, measurable and increasing value.”