AJ100 Sustainability Champion of the Year 2021 revealed

The impressive shortlist for AJ100 Sustainability Champion of the Year reflects the heartening industry transformation that is underway. After extensive debate, the judges unanimously recognised Hoolahan as this year’s champion for her pioneering work and cross-industry leadership on ‘material passports’ in existing buildings.

‘Rachel has gone above and beyond her role as sustainability lead within a practice in tackling this crucial retrofit topic. She is part of the next generation that is collaborating across the industry to make change,’ said the judges.

Honing in on the importance of material reuse in retrofit, Hoolahan identified an industry gap between guidance and practice. With the support of client Grosvenor Britain & Ireland, whose portfolio contains many existing buildings, Hoolahan tapped into Orms’ in-house knowledge base from its long track record in refurbishment and set out to explore how to make inventories of buildings as banks of materials that could be useful to architects during design.

‘You have to know what you’ve got; capturing information about an existing building is a huge part of it,’ she explains.

Working with Elliott Wood structural engineers, Arup and Heta Architects, the team explored options for non-invasive structural surveys and ways to incorporate re-use in specification.

Page from Orms’ material passports research

Hoolahan likens the materials in an existing building to Lego bricks: organise and tag them, keep what you want to re-use, and sell the rest. The ambition is that every component in an existing building could be tagged with a QR code that captures the relevant technical information, an approach accessible to any practice. ‘You don’t have to be a BIM practice, and nobody will be left behind. It can be a simple Excel inventory,’ explains Hoolahan. While the tool itself is straightforward, the barriers are numerous: buying new is almost always cheaper than re-use; the widespread use of glue makes disassembly difficult; and, most importantly, there are inherent risks in a new approach. Orms is currently piloting the tool on an office refurbishment.

The jury applauded Orms’ open-source dissemination of the material passport research through a clear and concise report available for download on the practice’s website and well-attended industry webinars. Judges particularly commended Hoolahan’s initiative as a self-starter, her collaborative approach to innovation working with industry partners and her leadership role within the UK Green Building Council.

The jury also made special mention of Gary Clark, chair of the RIBA’s Sustainable Futures Group, for his achievements, most notably the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge and revising the RIBA awards criteria so that all buildings entered have been in use for at least one year