Simon has a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering and for the past year prior to beginning his PhD has worked as a graduate civil engineer. During this time, he gained experience in flood risk and SuDS design, green building and climate modelling. He is looking to use his passion for tackling climate change, interest in sustainable building techniques and drive to combine qualitative and quantitative research to good effect during his PhD project.

Simon’s project will focus on net-zero whole life carbon performance of buildings, therefore examining both embodied and operational carbon performance of buildings over their lifespan. Pertinent to this is how indoor environmental quality performance is simultaneously managed.

The project aim is to develop a building design framework to engage technical and non-technical stakeholders via a mixed methods, participatory approach and identify opportunities for both zero carbon and occupant satisfaction, and to examine results across different climatic zones. Stakeholder aspirations, preferences and design decisions will be elicited through a combination of surveys and workshops. Building modelling software will then be used to test the efficacy of the approach, yielding carbon performance and indoor environmental quality parameters. The process and results of the framework will subsequently be evaluated to examine how building performance and stakeholder inputs vary between case studies in different Köppen-Geiger climate zones.