How to Build Less, Better: Designing Sustainable Workplaces That Last

0:00Jenny Edwards:Creativity, I don't think is really taught. You can be taught how to follow a process. You can be taught how to speak articulately. You strongly believe you can be taught how to pitch, how to react quickly, how to respond when a client says, I hate it. And you're like, want to cry, but you can't. But I don't think you can teach creativity. I think it's something you either have or you don't.

0:17Guy:Hey, welcome to another episode of Space by Stansons. Today, I'm with Jenny Edwards, creative director at Oktra. And I love the energy for a start, the whole... too much energy no no no there's not a thing it's not i did it's not a thing in my book not things too much energy is that just go just go go go yeah no so it's wicked so the energy's wicked a really great story um from her career but also her like personal interests and how that pulls into workplace design so gonna get i don't like the word under the skin does sound weird doesn't yeah i'm healing about the layers and get under your skin and i'm like that sounds a bit like irritating so i'm not going with that but i'm just kind of like dig into it let's go with that but hey welcome jenny thank you so much thanks for joining um right quick enough creative director paint that quickly in a quick run what that looks like so essentially we run the whole process in

1:11Jenny Edwards:terms of the design aspect so typically you make a project that comes in either as a page it may be a client that you work with in the past and then typically um our business kind of set up in teams and then some of us are in central so you may go to an initial meeting when the kind of project is just an idea and then that's when you start doing your space plans etc and then when it becomes a bit more of a we know in the pitches there's a submission there's a process then that's when we involve the wider team and then typically under us will have other creative designers technical designers and then also visualizers and then we work kind of alongside pre-con who do the costing etc so you can run the whole design process towards pitch and then you're working alongside pre-con like i said and then usually a project director who's kind of globally in charge of that project and usually the team as well so it's kind of working alongside a lot of different people and it's kind of keeping all the trains on the track so to speak and then having a global kind of overview but i think the best bit is kind of because you have that kind of step back picture you kind of see how all the pieces are kind of running and then it's quite nice to kind of watch all those things like come together with everybody and i think it kind of gives you that really good ability to work with lots of different people i think sometimes you get in these silos of working by yourself yeah and i think now in these kind of roles is good because we kind of are dashing around speaking to this person speaking to this going to graphic designer and saying okay we've got this we've got this working back and forth the visualizers so i think it's kind of a very it's a very varied role i think it's kind of you look at all the people in our business and these types of roles they're all such different people I'm with you because I like talk to loads

2:46Guy:of people as well in a day but like how do you keep that organized and like notes or that or

2:51Jenny Edwards:you just like super partially it's having a good memory but I think partially it is for me I keep notes on everything that ever happens in every meeting so I have a kind of one note tabs for every project every meeting I've ever had even if it's a kind of meeting with a client two years ago I'll still keep the notes from that because sometimes things come back around the client who they said oh we've lost the building we're not doing that job they may come back and then say oh do you remember that conversation we had two years ago at least you can pull it up and then refer to kind of what you had before so i think it's about for me the meticulous kind of note taking almost takes it out of my brain puts it on the paper and then i can move on something else

3:28Guy:i think of us have had every note taking platform at one note software oh real notebooks i've done

3:36Jenny Edwards:it all i think what's good about it is you can search within it also yeah for like a word so if i'm looking for you i could search in my one note and it'll show me the pages that have your name on i'll be like oh yeah that's last time we discussed this or you ever use mirror board my oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i am obsessed with it oh right so love it i've been invited to them i've always thought it looks amazing it's so great but i've got this like really reserved thing where

4:01Guy:basically i do everything every like new thing i do it because i'm just so i'm a bit of magpie like that and so i think well i mustn't do it i delete it it's rubbish i'm promised it's rubbish and i won't hear anything about it but now i'm on here i can't not hear about it so talk to me

4:14Jenny Edwards:it's great because you can see the process that's what i love about it it's like you can say okay this is where we've started and it's basically just like an endless digital whiteboard and there's no end to it there's no oh linear way and there's some people in the office and i love it there's just so linear with it and it's like so controlled and it's like mine is like men is more like that which is like here are my kind of original things and then here's where you've gone and then this project i've been working on for the past two years i've had the same mirror board for that project for two years so you can see two years worth of thinking on this board and it's so fascinating to me to see where you started off and all these conversations that we had when we first met the client all these things with some i love pinterest but then the problem with pinterest is that it's limited because with things like miro because you can use it on the board whereas with pinterest you're limited to images and it's fabulous to see all your images together but sometimes i might want to overlay it with a sketch of the reception desk or and then put the materials next to it and with pinterest it's like a very linear formation this is much more overlapping and it just i kind of think it's a lot more beautiful the way it kind of all lays

5:19Guy:out you know i always think pinterest takes a bit of explaining as well because i saved this picture but it's that bit that was why i saved the picture don't look at this bit yeah because that's not right and i don't want to give the wrong impression but or yeah it was like the idea of a skylight not necessarily that skylight yeah do you know what i mean like that you like the light the way that the light comes down and kind of exactly and so sometimes like i have really organized pinterest the only thing i hate about in pinterest is it all gets a bit samey samey like it needs to somehow get more content on there or something i think i think so i think it's like you can also

5:50Jenny Edwards:go around in these like i call them pinterest holes yeah and the problem now a little bit is there's a huge influx of these ai generated images so quite often you will pin something and then you know and it shows you similar images and i'm like looking at them i'm thinking it's a shame because like 70 of them are ai generated and i'm looking at it i'm thinking it's beautiful but it's not it's not real and it's also couldn't be real because of you know you look at it you're thinking you couldn't ever build it and it's like i think ai can be great when it's used in the right way but i think it's quite dangerous certain people because what you've got now is sometimes clients using ai to create an image and whilst ai can create an image there's no soul there's no reason right it's i like brown chairs and i like cats and you can put that in and it would give you an image and it has brown chairs and it has cats right but it doesn't mean anything it's just

6:40Guy:pictures it's just pinterest yeah yeah just pinterest gatherers but putting your pinterest

6:44Jenny Edwards:images into an image that's one main thing and i think like and that's what people always hear people say to you like what do you think but do you think ai is going to take your job yeah that do you but you probably get all the time get all the time especially if you had a few drinks do you think ai is going to take your job yeah yeah and i'm like well me personally i don't think so because like the whole reason that most designers and i can only speak to myself but i think most designers similar reasons is that we absolutely love it and it's like you come for design with a soul and it's like if you're looking at a project and i can tell you every detail about why why did you do that why do we pick this finish why do we do this why is this this height there's a reason behind everything and that reason may be completely practical which is the spring closer here and we have to do this or it may be completely impractical do you know what i mean is because we want you to create this arrival experience and you want to create we want to create this moment so you build a shield so that when you come around the wall and you get that you know that wow moment which is what we're all looking for in a project right yeah and it's like i think with ai there there's no that thought that thought process and strangely it's also quite

7:47Guy:repetitive yeah because it is generative ai like it is getting quite repetitive like you especially now it's been out for a little bit yeah you're starting to see it again and again other thing i think about ai especially when people are involved like if it's a pt or some or interior designer and that's about people which is most things it's like it falls over a bit because you're designing you've got to think about emotions and neurodiversity or yeah that includes a rival experience and designing in pinch points so people collaborate or designing out flows so people move

8:19Jenny Edwards:quicker and like that kind of thinking is just too advanced i think and i don't know what maybe it'll get there i don't know i can't think i think there's something that humans evolve yeah we're

8:30Guy:not always the same so like me and you today would work differently like how gen zed are going to work yeah and so like you've got every project has got its own merits that's what i'm trying to say yeah and you've got to apply your human brain to that well this is what i mean and i think it's

8:43Jenny Edwards:like you don't want everything to look the same you don't want everything to look one way and i think like that is the beauty of a human being being part of it like if you look at jobs as individual merits like we we've been covering with i don't even neco health and like if you look at those jobs you most people don't believe it's a real image because it's so perfect it's so coordinated it's so beautiful but it's every single aspect of it has been thought through by their designers by our designers by our technical team like and it's it's incredible the level of coordination the level of detail it takes to create a pinterest or instagram moment it's on tiktok people have done these amazing like walkthroughs of it and everyone's like this is a real space it's not AI because people think it's an AI space because it's so coordinated you don't know where the sprinklers are you don't know where the grill is because it's hidden behind a little recess and a placer board like it's so clever how it's all designed and thought through in these moments and they've really thought about the user experience and I think designing spaces like that is possible but it's it takes a level of coordination beyond which most projects don't have they can build your time really to actually design because it's so difficult to do that carry of job and i think ai makes it look so easy and that's what i think is a shame because when you look at an image like that when i look at those images that they've that they've built for neko and how amazing it looks in the images and you know how much work was put in by all the people involved in order to get it to that point and it's an incredible icon they look beautiful but it's like i think ai does a disservice but it makes it look like it's so easy like you can just do it and it's like no because you do need to think about where your sprinklers where's your escape signage you know all those boring things you still need them that's all wreck the space fire extinguishers fire extinguishers those hideous silver ones on the stand cables everything cable management all of these things that you need how do you make it look beautiful and i think like ai just makes it seem like anyone can do it and i and i don't believe that anyone can do it at least not net not at the moment anyway and not compliant certainly that's that's that's the challenge yeah

10:50Guy:i'm on the project at the minute and it's just it's so beautiful and i'm just like by the way that's an ai image so like that wouldn't happen because there needs to be a join there yeah i've said someone recently that the design process is really important that you kind of okay yeah you could ai at weather but you lack a whole load of thought like deep thought yeah and when you get to build or even more so finishing and dressing all of that all those decisions will be really easy just just look forward like 16 weeks or look forward six months because all of that visualizer and that oh that doesn't look good there or should we put that there and those like kind of those moments yeah and it's okay it might be taking three days to do it instead of three minutes in AI but that's kind of rubbing the corners off and really polishing it up so that when you get down here it's all just like this yeah and there's no surprises there's no extra costs or we needed this lampshade yet but that's obvious because we thought that through and we can always tell I think

11:43Jenny Edwards:visuals that have been done in haste which is and sometimes we have to because it's just time skills you know you just sometimes you have to which no no designer particularly likes doing them in like a couple of days but sometimes you just have to from time skills and i think it's interesting to see that typically not always those visuals that have been created in haste usually the scheme you build is not those whereas the visuals that someone has developed over time with the client with the visualizer in tandem that may be taking a lot longer to produce maybe not consistently maybe it's been you know yeah process those visuals tend to be pretty spot on yeah yeah and i think it's amazing you know when they show you the visual now you show you the real space yeah and i'm like that's great design that's great design when you've really thought about it and you've really planned it and it's like rather than sometimes we've got a bad habit a little bit i think of doing visuals too early i think because dmb and consultative they look at it in a different way consultative you don't do visuals kind of till the end like you've already said what you're getting we've already sold it to you but then we do the visuals just as like a whereas in dmb it's almost the opposite you do the visual first and then you kind of it's almost like a teaser it's like a design trailer like what's to come it's like a sales yeah a little bit and i mean it is it is sales i mean everything is sales consultative is sales and d &b is sales i think it's that you just you talk about it in a different

13:00Guy:way yeah yeah this actually does bring a bit because you did mention perkins and will you were there yeah and you were in d &b and everything what is the bit you miss about trad perkins and

13:10Jenny Edwards:will the most i miss the people i love the people at perkins well i met so many lovely people there and i think it was just a very nice supportive friendly just really decent bunch of people and i think it was because it was the thing is about when you work in a consultancy and you know an architecture or just a design business because everyone is a designer it's like kinsmit you know what i mean that you have it like you can go into the t-point and be like everyone look at this material and everyone's like oh and it's like because you're all of that mindset yeah and i think it's like that was really lovely and because they push sustainability so much but they don't just push it as like it's not just the sales things for them it's like i kind of i always wanted to work there and then sometimes you think if i always wanted to work there and i actually were there is it gonna be a disappointment because you know sometimes things are yeah you think oh you know when you're a kid and you really want something then you get it and you

14:03Guy:think oh actually it's not that good yeah whatever it's just yeah it's marketing but then i think

14:06Jenny Edwards:when i got there because i've always had an interest in sustainability and sustainable design specifically and i really wanted to work there because of that because of how much they push it and then when i worked there i was surprised by in a good way about everyone actually does believe it and i thought it was really nice how much they haven't just like bought into it and it isn't just a sales thing for them like the people that work there do genuinely actually care and i think that to me is what's really nice that everyone has bought into it so much like i wouldn't say i mean some people say it's like a cult that says it has negative connotations but i think in a really good way everyone is super on board with it and it's i like that for their clients it's not an option it's not like oh do you want to do this do you want to do this it's like they have a specific set of criteria of things that you're not allowed to specify that are the red list or things like that and then they don't give people an option it's like that's what they just do and i think a lot of businesses would do well to to do that which is like you know quite often we'll start off on really good principles and then sometimes it gets derailed for various reasons kind of budget and then but with Perkins they don't they don't really give that option typically and I think like to be so strong in your convictions of this is the right way to do it I think is really is really really cool it's like finding your people a little bit yeah and like with Asif who's like the head of sustainability there and I think like he just has so much knowledge and i think people like that it's like if you're really into it it's

15:36Guy:just fascinating and so then you went dmb like what was the best bit about dmb like why wouldn't

15:40Jenny Edwards:you go back or so i originally moved it's funny because i actually ran into so i was um the perican's office is actually around the corner from where i work now i actually ran into someone the other day and he was like oh would you ever come back and i was like oh i don't think so i've never been back to somewhere that i worked previously and it's i have a lot of good memories there but i think it's almost like once you've moved on i think yeah i don't know i've never really couldn't imagine myself going back I mean never say never you know if you ever want to come back and offer me a job but I think I moved from Perkins to Maris because that quite a shock it was a culture shock the culture is super super different and a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions about Maris I personally really liked it so dynamic it's so like loud and there's always something going on it's never dull there's always something and I just like because I'm a very energetic, loud person.

16:28Jenny Edwards:I think for me, like I kind of thrive in those types of environments. No one's ever going to be like, you're too loud. That's never going to happen at Marist. They'll be like, you're not being loud enough. And they'll be like, and I kind of love that dynamism. That's kind of, there's like a vibe and it's like super energetic and super intense. And some people find it too much and they're like, oh, it's too much for me. Like I feel like it's too much. Whereas like, if you like that type of thing, I think it's really good. and I think coming out of COVID and it was to try and like jolt myself out of this kind of I think COVID brought up a lot bad habits for a lot of people and I think like it was that kind of right I'm going to be back in the office I'm going to be back in an energetic busy environment and you know lots of energetic people and I think like it was really good for that and actually looking at design in a completely different way than I never had before I think at Perkins there's a whether people like it or whether they don't there's a there's a more of a kind of it's not it's not a narrow view of design but it's there's there's kind of a a more recognized look i would say for perkinson projects and they're to me they're beautiful but yeah it's not it's not as rigid as like fosters but it's there's something there but if you go to them then typically you're wanting something along those lines um and they're beautiful whereas when you look at like a like a d &b and a maris offering there's no style there's no there's no point of view necessarily rather than the individual person and i kind of like the idea of that absolute freedom almost and it was for it was almost overwhelming because you're like i can and then you would say well you know what should i do and they'll say do we want to do anything and you're like oh and then there's kind of this option thing and it was you know instead of doing this one option it was such a different process you're doing these multiple options and i think it really challenged you to not just like one idea but you know sometimes i don't know if you've ever done these life drawing classes and they'll give you five seconds to draw something five seconds five seconds five seconds and then where you start and then where you end is always super different and i think the idea of doing like a couple of different options or things like that actually drives out of you something that's completely different than where you would start and i think it was very challenging in that aspect which i think is really good if you want to grow in your career to challenge yourself i think you have to be quite a confident person you know there's a lot of strong characters and which i would say i like to because i'm a strong character but maybe not everyone would thrive in that i think it gets a mix probably a mixed bag which i think is a little bit unfair because i think it's you know your personal experience i guess and main was good it's just

18:54Guy:the culture isn't it work for some people yeah for others i think it's like a let's say a work

18:58Jenny Edwards:hard play hard type mentality and i think like the atmosphere is just is just different but i think the team that you're on and the people that are there and there's there's some really great design that when you speak to people and i am guilty of thinking that the people that are in trad and the people that are in dmb in terms of design anyway i always thought it'd be two completely different types of people but it's actually not at all i mean there's so much crossover now definitely

19:27Guy:recently like probably since covid like you're saying i'm not sure when it started but it seems

19:32Jenny Edwards:to be getting more and more all the time i think a lot of people and i include myself in this were a little bit i don't want to say snobby but i think there was a there's a slight aspect of if you've been trained as an architect you've gone through the very traditional very linear formal process that in some type of way your approach may be slightly better than someone who maybe has come from a different avenue whereas now I actually don't believe that at all because I think creativity I don't think is really taught you can be taught how to follow a process you can be taught how to you know speak articulately you can be I strongly believe you can be taught how to pitch but I don't think you can teach creativity I think it's something you either have or you don't and I think like you can teach so many things you can teach about how to react quickly how to respond when a client says I hate it and you're like want to cry but you can't and I think there's so many things you can teach people right but creativity i think is like yeah it's in it isn't it is in there yeah sometimes you have to bring it out in people right and sometimes it's about having confidence and trusting yourself and saying you know trust this process and i think having experienced both environments i think like that the people in both are just the actual when you get down to it and the creativity that innate creativity is the same it's all just about it's just a different process just a different process that you follow but the people are the same in

20:50Guy:terms of creativity and i kind of love that i do think that back in the like few years ago i don't know how like 10 years ago whatever like dmb had a bit of a bad rep that it was like very cookie cutter projects like fly by night terrible kind of fly by night um builders sort of thing just

21:06Jenny Edwards:doing a bit of design and yeah it got a bad rep of they would come in and they would take it take a beautiful you know traditional design and then they would rip it apart and they would you know put in horrible vinyl and awful stuff but whether it was like that in the past i can't speak to it because i didn't work in it but no it's not like that no you can't do things that aren't compliant it won't get signed off everyone has all these formal you know health and safety processes it's a very formal process of making sure things are compliant because number one we have to but it's also the fact that you're not allowed to show someone one thing and build something else that you can't show someone a wood floor and put in value in it without them signing off and agreeing it now you have to get every single finish has to be signed off like the client has to be a completely robust procedure to make sure that that that doesn't happen yeah and i think i don't know whether that's something that's common more recently or it's just you know processes evolve but i think it's a common misconception and it was a common misconception i held also because i thought that's what they did yeah yeah same same yeah which i didn't know anyone in dmb so i don't know why i thought that i just obviously it was just what other people say yeah and i didn't but i didn't know anyone in dmb and i think now obviously i know a lot of people in dmb and also a lot of people still in trad and i think it's funny that there's still misconceptions about that and about sustainability that you know everyone in dmb doesn't care about sustainability and that there's no you know there's no kind of thinking about it and i don't think that's true and i think you're a living proof i think i think it's about the person the designer specifically is it is the company but i think designers need to take responsibility for you know they have this thing about ched lately on the planet right and i think it's super key people used to say a design and build project you're looking at like a two-year lifespan right and i really really really strongly disagree with that i think that no we're not we don't want a tournament in two years i'll do your other office in a different location but i don't want to be doing that same office in two years time because to me then we haven't really designed it very well in the beginning like obviously you make tweaks you live in an environment you make tweaks right that's just what happens but i think if you're wholesale changing environment that you built two years ago there's a flaw which may be the design isn't thought through you haven't had enough time you know maybe the client didn't know what they want maybe maybe their business has entirely changed in which case you know it's more understandable but i think now we really strongly are pushing more towards designing for lease events if you're taking this space for another 20 years i want what we put in to have the ability to be there for 20 years and there's a lot of talk now but should we do things like material passports where yes you can see the product life cycle so if i put something in and then you know facilities change hands people people move on so how do you track the life of that product from when you put it in so we're talking about with a couple of different companies in terms of material passports so you can actually when you do a building and it's a cat and you put all your cat things in that all those lights that you might put in that you can track how old they are i mean ideally you wouldn't do cat a at all yeah because i think cat is a contentious issue in the industry anyway yeah i didn't know that there's a whole market for you can get everything basically second hand there's pre-used lights fan coils commercially yeah there's now there's a whole second-hand markets i didn't know existed so there's a couple of companies that are doing it material index the one that we have worked with they're an independent company that we can have been speaking with and we've used them on a few things recently they'll come in and do a full audit of everything and then what they do is they they take the products and they will sell them on the market to trades you know so the client then can see okay that carpet that i've taken out and if they can't sell them then they'll donate them you know there's a lot of there's a lot of things different things that they do in order to make sure that those products don't go to landfill and i think the main thing for me is i just don't want to be creating needless waste and i think that people think it's just about the product but it's so much of a bigger so much more than product so much more than a bigger picture of the product right it's so much more than that it's not just what is the product made of where does it come from but it's how are you using the product what are you designing it into like the most efficient way and the most sustainable way is to design a building on a grid right most buildings are designed on a three meter or five meter grid in terms of structurally that's how it works right so when we get products and most products like plasterboard acoustic panels etc are 1.2 by 2.4 so if you think about it if you have that in a say three it doesn't fit into the same grid but then if you put your walls in so then what you need to do is to cut your panels so either we need to change the size of the panels that we use or we need to work around the size of the panels that we have so for example what we're doing on a project now is looking at zero waste so we've got existing rooms we can't change them that's the existing rooms they exist there the building itself is a funny shape so you know it's what it is it's not on a standard grid it's like it's like this table like so you know there's there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting things but explaining to the client the approach which is this is zero waste we're going to buy standard size panels we're going to mount them on the wall and then we're going to have a gap around we're going to paint that and then that's it and then that means that we don't need to do cutouts it's not on the same wall as our av our av is over here on a painted wall you can change your bracket to whatever size you want change your screen two years down the line fine my panels are just there same as ceiling panels we're working on standard sizes we're not doing bespoke products bespoke products are fundamentally one of the biggest producers of waste yeah because a manufacturer has their machine set up because a manufacturer doesn't want wasted right when they create products because then it's wasted money they're throwing away so they've got their machine set to maximize product and to minimize waste naturally so if a manufacturer is selling a product in a certain size and you ask for a bespoke size the most of the reason why bespoke prices are higher is because that bit that you've cut off you know they're probably thrown that way so if you're designing on the standard sizes that the manufacturer does then from the point of manufacturing you're creating less waste and then when you bring it to your site then you're not cutting it you're creating less waste in general but it's also speed of install i just have to sit my panels on the wall and you have to make sure that it's adhesive things low voc because you can have the best panel in the world but you're sticking it on with the worst glue or you're not using certain hangers then there's all those things that can make it fall over but it's i think that the amount of time and effort that it puts into not only come up with the ideas but then to implement them i think is quite a commitment we have to make the commitment ourselves to do it right yeah and it's harder and i would die it's harder it's harder for me to buy secondhand clothes than it is for me to just go into you know primark yeah but i'm you know i made a commitment a long time ago that i'm not going to buy fast fashion i don't want to contribute to that industry other people that do you can't judge everybody else and what they do i think you can only control what you do and i think if you let yourself you can be very you know angered by a lot of things you can't control so it's not it's not worth it but i think the way i always see it is you can only control what you're doing you can only control your reaction to things and how you deal with things yeah and if a client comes to you and they're saying that they want not just a product that is an accreditation box ticking sustainable project which is fine and it does make you adhere to a certain set of criteria but we all know that sometimes it does turn into a little bit of box ticking which is i think a shame yeah you want to do it you want to do it because you care yeah you want to do it because you care not because you're trying to hit a set of criteria you can still hit the criteria but you don't necessarily need to do the box ticking exercise And I think looking at it from a holistic standpoint is such a great way to be.

28:56And I think a lot of clients get really nervous when sustainability is mentioned in any format

29:02Jenny Edwards:because they immediately think it's going to cost them loads of money.

29:05Guy:But what you're saying isn't just about designing with recycled materials, as good as that is. And I'm all for that as well. And obviously, push that wherever I can. but it's really about designing out waste like architecturally or structurally or in the actual components of the building and how it's put together and i think that's where so much waste is anyway i think that's where so much time is what you're saying and there's so much labor yeah and so if you can design sustainably it should actually be cost effective it should be cost

29:36Jenny Edwards:effective and it's also things like designing for dismantle so really when you design joinery the the old school way to do it is glue everything's glued yeah and then in five years time your business needs might have changed and you might think well we don't want to have i don't know you know bleacher seating we've all done a million bleacher seats in our life so you may think well we don't really need these bleacher seats anymore we now want to have a more inclusive approach which is not bleacher seating because i'm not inclusive so it's having something that's more level and then the person who is talking is on a stage rather than so now we might do it the opposite that way so instead of having people sitting on tier seating whereas if you've got different accessibility needs and you can't get up there so you've got a worse viewing position what now we actually look at is changing that so the person who is presenting is on a stage and you can obviously do a lifting platform to that stage and then everyone who's seating can be sitting on a flat floor so it's so easy to access so it's just about sometimes changing how you look at things so they're necessarily affecting the design in a negative way and i think that's what's really interesting when you hear other people's perspectives on it yeah it's just about changing your perspective it's not necessarily about affecting the design and i think the main thing is designing for people designing for people is the number one important thing in any project right and the fundamental fact is if you design something that is a healthy environment that is for those people you have to look at the voc levels and anything that is off-gassing you're going to get more people off sick you're going to get people with headaches who have to go home there's all these things where actually fundamentally it'll negatively affect your business sometimes people especially financial people they'll be like oh well it doesn't matter to us and it doesn't affect us and it does affect your business because fundamentally only 66 % of an office is utilized at one time yeah that's a huge because people off sick people on holiday etc so it's a huge proportion of time and money of a portion of rent that you're spending that's not occupied so really you should be aiming for like an 80 utilization of your office space to maximize your your rental cost your rent your the amount you're paying rent for an office so if you can minimize the amount of time that people are off sick then you're going to increase that and that's where i think sometimes you have to explain that to people because people think that you know people say to me oh you're just you're the sustainability person you just love it and i'm like i do love it

31:56Guy:i never thought it that way because i walk around and i think i've walked to net building net building net building and as soon as you make that five people that's not my big company is it five people and they're like wow like what an impact we can have that is really that's a really like a good way of looking at it so if somebody's feeling that what impact can they have and yeah maybe like well actually yeah you can like it's easy to feel like a small cog i think and especially if you're more junior and sometimes you feel like oh i'm just you know i don't really

32:22Jenny Edwards:have that much project impact and stuff like that which i don't think is necessarily true i think it's like you do feel like that especially when you're a junior person you think oh no one's really listening to what I'm saying but a lot of the time it's trying to absorb what you can from everybody else and knowing that even at that point when you're you know fairly early in your career that you're absorbing all those things and I think that's why people like Asif and you know people that are pushing that sustainability message in a way that's palatable for the general population and that people understand and get it and it's not overly complicated and it's not overly academic in a way that doesn't have real life implications I think those people are super key in any business and whatever way you want to look at it those people are so important because those are like the the people that are flying the flag and they're letting people kind of understand that message of like you actually can have an impact just by making these small things and as you grow in your career your voice gets bigger right and that's why I always say that everyone always says you know you got I've got a lot to say I've got a big myth I know I have a big myth but I think it's like if you if you are that person who has you know a strong character and an hour if you have a message that you're pushing i want to push that message because i do genuinely

33:30Guy:it's so important i also think you don't even if you're not a confident person you attract what you are yeah so if you're clear about what you are you will attract it and then you'll start to pick up the more sustainable say sustainability is your thing you'll start to pick up more sustainable project and then maybe you'll start to be a sustainable influencer within your business or like head of stone or something like that so you don't always need to be the loudest voice

33:50Jenny Edwards:no i mean i am the lotus voice but you don't but you don't i think people think like oh well i'm not the lotus voice i'm not the project lead and you're like but you can just because your voice isn't the lotus just because you might not be the most competent person doesn't mean that you can't still have an impact on things and i think it's just that sometimes that's what i was saying about people think oh it doesn't affect it i can't have much impact but i really do think you can and i think it's just small things it's the same thing in your personal life right like people buying things from timu buying things from all these shine or whatever it's called sheen and i think it's but it's an education piece right it's i can understand that if you're 12 years old and i want to buy a top if i can go to you know a certain brand and buy a top for 100 pounds which i probably can't afford now i'm 12 but i can go on sheen and i can get 10 tops for 20 pounds i mean you're probably gonna buy from machine right but it's kind of the same thing in the building industry you don't want to be the teamu builder and especially for clients for them to for clients to have the understanding the visibility if someone's coming in at such a low price i would really want to drill down into those numbers to understand how is it so cheap where are you getting those products from is it comparable to what someone else might be specifying is it you know we use called equal or approved and when we used to do the mbs schedules and and the specs and we rate it and it'd be so limited that you can only have that one product pretty much but i think sometimes people are so blinded by what they see as a low upfront cost they don't realize that the operating cost of that is going to be much longer over time so for your business whilst you're well you know the capex cost is low your opex cost is high so for me i'm like well maybe you would want to spend more initially and then but over time that's going to stand the test of time it's durable you're not going to have to you know do the access statement where we're going to change the t points if somebody with accessibility needs joins the business no do it from day one i don't want to write an access strategy i want to design it properly from the beginning so everything is accessible and that you don't need to change it so if someone joins the business with accessibility needs you don't have to say oh no we need to make all these changes it should be joined tomorrow we're ready we're fully inclusive business we're ready prepared for you so yeah then maybe that capix cost maybe a little bit higher but actually no the gap isn't as big as what people i think think that the gap is yeah but it's the gap of you're just taking the cost from this column and putting it in this column because you're gonna have to make the changes to the t-points yeah to make them accessible later and why not just do it now yeah and we as a business are strongly trying to push clients and sometimes you have to challenge clients and you have to you know you have to say you know we really do believe this is the best way i mean it is technically building regulations but it's like we strongly are trying to push everything should be accessible we need to have color contrast you need to do this you need to do this and it's not just because it's building regulations because it's not just because it's good practice but if you want to be an inclusive business and you want to attract the best talent those are the things that you need to implement in your space in order to attract the best talent i want to work at a business that's inclusive i don't want to work at a business that is exclusionary i mean most people i don't think would especially outwardly exclusionary you want to work at somewhere that's inclusive and i want to work somewhere that i know that is employing people for their talent not for their abilities in either a physical or a mental well-being perspective i want to work with people that are the best regardless of what their other challenges may be yeah and i think it's that it's just a different way of looking at it right people think sometimes that inclusivity is this kind of like it's the same sustainability right people go yeah i mean and they think oh no it's gonna be all these silly silly things but it's not i think