CWCT AGM AND MEMBERS' MEETING 2024 - REVIEW

Our 2024 AGM and Members' Meeting was held on 14 September and was a great success.  Following feedback from last year’s event, we had a bigger venue this year so that 300 of you could join us for excellent presentations, important dissemination, discussion and networking. 

The day started with updates from our Chair, Saverio Pasetto, Head of Facades at Skanska UK, and David Metcalfe, Director of CWCT, who provided a review of CWCT activities over the past year.  One of the key messages here was the importance of good communication and knowledge sharing.  Please sign up to our Latest News section and follow me on LinkedIn to ensure you are first to hear about important information from CWCT.  Please also share this with colleagues.  Requests were also made for new Sustainability Stories and for feedback on our H&S initiative. 

Following the AGM, our morning session focussed on current industry challenges, including building safety, fire and sustainability.

Our first speaker was Jon Vanstone from the Building Safety Regulator.  Jon spoke about the Building Safety Act and in particular what Gateway 2 means in relation to façade submissions to the Regulator.  This is an area of great uncertainty at present and it was very interesting to hear the views of, and discuss this with Jon.

Next, David Stow from Arup presented a fire engineers view of modern facades.  This provided a really pragmatic view of the fire risks of modern facades and how these can be managed, something the industry has been battling with for some time, and which future CWCT guidance will look to address.  Crucial to this is greater collaboration between fire engineers and façade engineers at an early stage in the design process to help ensure an appropriate fire strategy for the building.

Sustainability has been a key CWCT focus in recent years, and the next presentation gave an update on current progress.  Firstly, we heard from Serena Gugliotta and Matteo Costanzo from WSP about the exciting news that we will soon be making an embodied carbon calculation tool available to CWCT Members to help reduce barriers to adopting widespread embodied carbon calculations.  Our thanks to WSP for so generously making their calculation tool available to us, a great example of the collaboration needed in this area.  Secondly, Laura Solarino from Arup gave an update on guidance being produced on façade EPD’s (the work of Workstream 6).  This work aims to provide much needed guidance on the complexities of EPD’s and how they should be used as data to assess the embodied carbon of facades.  This guidance will be published soon.

The morning ended with a panel discussion on the Building Safety Act’s impact on façade design and procurement.  On stage were Paul Savidge from Wintech, Robert Simcock from Sir Robert McAlpine and Terje Vallestad from Permasteelisa, discussing the various different approaches to Gateway 2, the challenges being faced adapting to the new regulatory process and uncertainties that still exist.  It was great to hear about this from the perspective of different stakeholders and how they are responding to one of the most significant changes in regulations in living memory. 

The focus of the afternoon session shifted to the future of facades.  Our first speaker, Peter Fisher of Bennetts Associates, gave a really thoughtful and interesting presentation on the changing face of the façade.  He started by looking at facades of the past, and argued that over time, we have forgotten about designing facades that respond to their climatic conditions, instead relying on mechanical ventilation to deal with issues of overheating.  This is neither sensible nor sustainable, and a more engineered approach is now required.  We need to do more with less!  Our facades need to perform better whilst we limit the materials and systems used to achieve this.

Next, James O’Callaghan of Eckersley O’Callaghan, showcased inspiring examples of the role of glass in facades.  Again, a similar theme to that in Peter’s presentation emerged – we need to find ways of making glass work harder, to meet future challenges whilst recognising the environmental impact that glass can have.  His presentation ended with an insight into glass research at TU Delft, which might offer new opportunities for glass in the facades of the future.

Finally, Kenneth Zammit of Thornton Tomasetti, gave a fascinating presentation discussing how the power of technology, including AI and machine learning, is already having an impact on the way facades are designed, analysed and inspected, and how this may develop further in the future.  He also spoke about some of the potential risks that must be considered if these technologies are to be used responsibly.  This was eye-opening to many!

The day ended with drinks, further discussion and networking overlooking the river. 

Overall, the event was a great success.  Our thanks to all the amazing speakers and to everyone attending for making it a memorable day.

Presentations are available for Members to download via the Cladding Forum.

Next years event will be on Thursday 25th September - get this in your diary now!