Piece by Cressida Curtis, Group Sustainability Director, Wates Group

Arriving on the coat tails of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the SDGs had the hardest act to follow.

The MDGs had broadly halved global poverty, tripled the middle class and driven a vast improvement in health and sanitation for the poorest in society. Courage, collaboration and clear vision created “the most successful anti-poverty movement in history” and built cathedral-like expectations for the SDGs, which carry a more stretching, more nuanced and an even more critical agenda, given that they map the path to humankind’s survival.

How has our sector responded to the challenge? A pessimist would point towards buildings now being the second largest source of UK emissions, but on the other side of the ledger the realist in me notes the wave of hard financial investment I see channelled into ‘green’ construction, the moves away from bargain basement procurement by our strategic clients, and the momentum that’s building behind retro-first: a stepping stone towards buildings designed for reconfiguration, Lego-style.

You’ve only to look at the largest scheme in central London – British Land’s Canada Water – to find a bold and full-bodied commitment to sustainable development: 2 million sq ft of all-electric workspace, modular construction and almost 70% biodiversity net gain are not features you saw in the developments of 2015.

But environmental progress isn’t universal. Just 1% of UK households have a heat pump, though volumes are beginning to swell. And, despite strengthening demand signals on circularity, the supply-side response is lacking some basic coherence. We all know what needs to happen, yet parts of the system refuse to yield.

And socially, imagine the impact if we coordinated the sector’s muscle! 2 million people work in our industry, and we operate in every single community. A school leaver with limited qualifications can use well-defined training pathways to become the CEO of a business in their hometown on a six-figure salary. I can’t see a better vehicle for social mobility at scale, yet we have not so far applied our collective wit to being part of the solution.

So, with five years’ to go, and in the face of a new world order, how do we unstick the system and unleash our potential? For me, SDG 17 points the way: ‘Partnership’ has its own Goal because – simply – we each hold only part of the puzzle, and we go further when we go together.

And that’s what brings me to FutureBuild, where every part of the system is in the room. The opportunity here is to re-configure our jumble of puzzle pieces into a coherent, compelling future vision around which we can more confidently reorient the sector.

Clear vision, collaboration and courage were fundamental to the MDG’s success, and they remain powerful levers today. On Wednesday 5 March in the FutureBuild Arena at high noon we’ll be discussing how to deploy them with intent. How to reimagine our sector so we shift away from the transactional and grasp the opportunity that partnership presents to build a sustainable future – and a sustainable sector – for all.

Cressida Curtis

Group Sustainability Director, Wates Group