Why Air Quality Matters

In case you hadn't spotted, I launched my new consultancy practice in the last couple of weeks, Air Quality Matters, offering outcome-focused air quality and ventilation strategy, communication and business support.

So as I get started on this frankly terrifying adventure, I thought it might be an excellent time to explain more about my motivations behind it and what I hope to achieve.  

Why Air Quality Matters

Needless to say, poor air quality costs us all every day. It impacts our physical and mental health and wellbeing. Just Google the cost of Air Quality, Asthma, or Radon and see how deep the rabbit hole goes on any of those three.

It damages our homes and properties at a cost that is almost immeasurable. The list goes on: repairs and maintenance, time, resources, and lost rent and income. 

And to society through illness and disability, lost days to work and education, missed opportunity and potential. 

Along with the water we drink and the food we consume, the air we breathe, though less visible, can affect our lives as profoundly as anything else.

But, as someone who has worked in the built environment for over two decades, I have also seen what good indoor environments bring. And that, more than anything, is what drives me. 

Getting this stuff right has an impact on real people, their families and their future.

In Practice

I'm a practitioner and always have been, from Paramedic to Plumber, Business Owner to Manager of Business. I have always focused on pursuing better outcomes in practical ways.

There are many ways to improve our built environment practically, and ventilation has to be right up there as one of the core foundations. Yet, we see it fail to deliver time and time again.

From housing to the workplace, from schools to residential care. Our ability to deliver when it matters falls short too often. 

The difference between getting it right and falling short can be as little as the right bit of coordination when it matters, a structure that defines an outcome when it counts, the right focus on the quality of the outcome and governance at the right moment, an ability to communicate in the right way with the right stakeholders and frame a challenge.

You can feel it, can't you? This sense that it shouldn't be this hard to get right.

It's not for a lack of Engineers or Architects. There are plenty of experienced housing professionals, environmental health and safety professionals, trades and organisations, yet….. Something isn't quite sticking.

The Practice

Through Air Quality Matters, I aim to be the glue that brings this complex web of air chemistry and building physics, social science and stakeholder engagement, structure and effective communication together for organisations in a way that improves outcomes.

I believe we can do much better. 

I am already working with housing organisations, developing road maps for retrofit that finally get ventilation right. Working through the silo’s within them, breaking down the challenges that see missed opportunity after opportunity to tackle ventilation and outcomes that lead to damp and mould for example.

I am supporting workplaces in coming to terms with new codes of practice, standards and benchmarks. Helping them risk asses their spaces and portfolios and helping create environments that attract and retain the needed talent, reduce risk, and road map the workplace over the long term.

From a ventilation perspective, almost the entire built environment has been run to failure, which will have to change. It will take more than talking a good game, a few specifications and regulations to fix.

It requires a re-evaluation of priorities, a plan and experience to fix. 

Lets Talk

The sector is changing quickly from environmental data holding us to account for the spaces we manage to new research and insight informing regulations and guidance almost daily.

Ventilation and air quality will almost certainly be a central pillar in the success and failure of the built environment. 

I have a rare perspective on the sector, occupying a space between regulations, academia and industry. I have been on the ground delivering where it matters and can help you and your organisation do the same.

So if you're in housing and trying to pull together better outcomes for your tenants through retrofit, new build, maintenance, and repair. And ventilation has been something that just never seems to work out.

Your managing business and need to deal with IAQ in the workplace, achieving best practice standards. Or simply trying to do the right thing for staff where ever their place of work is.

You manage any kind of building or buildings and could just do with some help; let's talk. I don't always have all the answers, but if I don't, I will almost certainly know someone that does.

 It's time we shifted how we think about ventilation and air quality - Air Quality Matters.