Insights
Our thinking on heritage, structures and sustainable design.
Longer-form pieces from our engineers on the built environment, the profession and conservation — often written in response to current guidance from Historic England, RICS or the Institution of Structural Engineers, but ranging wherever the subject takes us.
Why use a Conservation Accredited Engineer on a listed building?
On what CARE accreditation actually means, and why it can be the difference that gets a Listed Building Consent case over the line.
The retrofit paradox: making historic buildings work harder without working against them
On Historic England’s revised Advice Note 18, and why energy efficiency and heritage significance are rarely really in conflict.
Development and historic buildings: why ‘less than substantial harm’ is the phrase that decides everything
On Historic England’s GPA2, and how good structural evidence shapes which side of the harm test a scheme lands on.
What a survey can’t tell you: the limits of visual inspection, and what RICS’s new guidance says about them
On RICS’s Surveying Assets in the Built Environment guidance, access limitations, and reading cracks with discipline.
The lowest-carbon building is usually the one already standing
On IStructE’s circular economy and reuse guidance, and making the embodied-carbon case for retention explicit.
Safety case reports for historic higher-risk buildings
On HSE’s safety case guidance, and what it asks of buildings it wasn’t written with in mind.