Richard Barwick – Chairman, Higher Risk Buildings Working Group
Richard Barwick has been appointed Chairman of the Warmer Homes London (Wave 3 Consortium) Higher Risk Buildings Working Group, bringing extensive experience in structural engineering, social housing retrofit, building safety and the management of complex refurbishment and decarbonisation programmes. His work has focused particularly on the challenges of delivering improvement works to occupied residential buildings, where energy performance, fire and structural safety, resident needs, regulatory compliance and practical construction delivery must all be considered together.
The need for collaboration. Decarbonising higher-risk buildings presents social landlords with a challenge that is substantially more complex and expensive than conventional housing retrofit. Moving large occupied blocks towards net zero may involve the interaction of façade improvements, ventilation, heating and hot-water replacement, electrical infrastructure, renewable energy, fire safety and structural considerations, while simultaneously meeting the requirements of the Building Safety Act and protecting residents throughout the works. Many landlords are facing essentially the same technical, regulatory, procurement and financial problems, and there is little value in each organisation attempting to solve them independently. The Working Group therefore provides an opportunity to pool experience, develop common approaches, share technical solutions and lessons learned, reduce duplicated expenditure and collectively address barriers that no individual landlord can efficiently resolve alone. Collaboration will be essential if the sector is to develop safe, repeatable and affordable approaches capable of delivering decarbonisation across London's higher-risk housing stock at scale.
