Reflections from the Insider North West Property Leaders Lunch
Last week, the Insider North West Property Leaders Lunch: Shaping Sustainable Construction brought together people from across the industry who are asking the right questions - about carbon, circularity, community and long-term value.

From academic research into recycled materials to practical examples of nature-led development, the discussions highlighted just how much is already happening - and how much further we still need to go. For us at Civic, it was engaging to hear so many of the themes we work on every day reflected back in the room.
Julian Broster, our co-founder and managing director, joined the final panel on sustainable city centres and stadiums. He shared how projects like the Strangeways regeneration framework in Manchester and Salford are rethinking urban development by providing new flood resilience, enhancing biodiversity, and embedding SUDs (sustainable urban drainage) into design that also improve amenity and the quality of place. These are projects that don’t just reduce harm from extreme climate events but are also regenerative.
He also spoke openly about roadblocks to progress. From delayed legislation - like the delayed UK parliament carbon emissions bill for regulating whole life carbon in the built environment - to the cultural and behaviour challenge needed from the sector, which too often default to what’s quick and low capex, rather than what’s right and regenerative as long term investment. As Julian said, “We need to show that regenerative choices add long-term value, not just short-term cost.”
Building material reuse
Dr Silvia Tedesco from the University of Salford, Centre for Sustainable Innovation, spoke about rethinking cement - the most carbon-intensive part of concrete - and the possibilities of reusing building materials through ‘industrial symbiosis,’ where one company’s waste becomes another’s resource.
These are present practices at Civic - most notably through our design of low carbon materials, such as graphene-enhanced concrete elements, and the award-winning ‘urban mining’ steel reuse project at The Elephant on Oxford Street in London, where re-used structural steel was reintegrated into the project and a major nearby recipient development. It’s a real-world example of how historic steel that would have been scrapped can become opportunity, helping to drive systemic change in the built environment. You can read more about this project here.
Retrofitting and building reuse
Tim Clement of Morgan Sindall challenged the room with a question: Is it better to build new net-zero buildings or improve the carbon performance of existing stock? His view - and ours - is that the most sustainable building is often the one that’s already there.
At Civic, we understand the benefits of making better use of existing buildings in our towns and cities – including heritage assets as well as 20th century buildings that are often perceived as having less ‘value’ and coming to the end of their original designed life. Retrofitting buildings and spaces by extending their design life has a vitally important role to play in a wider placemaking context and is crucial for reducing embodied carbon in the built environment.
Sometimes retrofitting can feel harder up front, but the future value is greater than a possible short-term cost. It connects people to place, heritage, and culture - adding real, long-term value.
You can read more about our some of our retrofit projects here.
Building services engineering
The term ‘fabric first’ has been common parlance for several years now, which begins with the fabric of your home, for example, focusing on the walls, windows and the roof, where the main causes of heat loss occur in the home.
This approach scales up to buildings of institutional scale, and is embraced by Civic’s building services team are experts in providing sustainable performance driven solutions in mechanical, electrical and public health consultancy.
To learn more about the building services we provide, please visit our website or get in touch with our directors Dan Watt on dan.watt@team-civic.com or Rob Harris on rob@team-civic.com.
Looking ahead
The event closed with a clear consensus, we have the knowledge, technology and enthusiasm within the industry to deliver genuinely sustainable places and buildings, and to help upskill to support a low carbon economy. We can and should work more collaboratively across the industry and government agencies to maximise and accelerate these opportunities. That means more system thinking, avoiding working in silos.
At Civic, that’s how we operate. And it was encouraging to see just how many others in the room are pushing in the same direction.
Services