Sara Kassam, Head of Sustainability Development, CIBSE.
Summary
School design has always had its own challenges; teaching spaces need to be flexible and education methods change with time. Carbon and energy targets have become more demanding, and internal environmental performance standards have increased. Therefore, changes in design practice, to a more holistic approach, are needed to help create schools which are more usable, more comfortable, and easier to operate by their users and offer opportunities for the educational challenges of the coming decades. This session will take a look at CIBSE TM57: Integrated School Design, a tool to help focus on the environmental parameters of successful learning spaces and identify the conflict between the individual design parameters that need our greatest attention.
Biography
Sara provides a focus for sustainability at CIBSE, developing policy, knowledge, technical and collaborative initiatives. This includes responding to UK and European consultations, disseminating information to encourage action on sustainability issues and representing the Institution in external forums. She has a background in sustainability and energy management in the higher education and local authority sectors.
Her breadth and depth of experience ranges from strategic planning to practical project implementation. This includes energy procurement, legislative compliance, auditing, performance reporting, communications, creative stakeholder engagement and driving change in organisations. Sara has a particular interest in how building users and operators can improve building performance.