The Quality of Life Foundation

Interesting and inspiring were two of the words used by our members to describe our first talk at our February monthly meeting.

Professor Sadie Morgan OBE is the founding director of Stirling Prize winning architecture practice dRMM. She has had a long and illustrious career, playing a key role in advocacy of exemplary design and architecture, through her professional and advisory roles.

Sadie recently founded the Quality of Life Foundation, a UK charity aimed at raising people’s quality of life and wellbeing through the improvement of the built environment.

Sadie spoke to us about her previous experience and about the Quality of Life Foundation, and how those fundamental requirements can be incorporated into the built environment.

Thanks to Sadie for taking time out of her incredibly busy schedule to speak to us.

You can learn more about the Quality of Life Foundation here: https://www.qolf.org/

Realine Solutions Ltd

Thanks to Andrew Cobden for leading the discussion during the second session of our November Monthly Meeting.


Andrew has established Realine Solutions Limited with Quinton Hill-Lines and a team of 6 deeply experienced operators all contributing to Realine’s business strategy and set-up to apply modern thinking to delivery and a new way of managing relationships, sharing returns and reducing risk. 
 
Andrew took us through the Realine thought processes to explain how by reducing the number of partners in delivery it is possible to encourage greater collaboration based on two-way transparency, increase scheme returns; all incentivised by more equally sharing in the upside created.
 

What did acumen7 do for me?

Mark Bew is a longstanding member of acumen7 and CEO of Cohesive, an international digital integrator delivering transformational outcomes across the built and natural environment.

Mark gave us a fascinating presentation about the advantages of being a member of acumen7, how that has helped him on his journey from running his own business to the merger with Cohesive, which has developed the first truly integrated approach for the management of critical assets and services.

For more information on The Cohesive Group, visit: https://cohesivegroup.com/

 

Measuring the sustainability of project outcomes

acumen7 member Warren Beardall shared the background to the PhD he is about to start at Leeds University during which he will explore whether sustainability can sit as a central project objective and benefit from united influence of project actors through the appropriate choices of project control. Approaching a PhD mid-way through his career, Warren is well placed to undertake this research, as he has 25 years of industry experience within the PFI sample space, a career focused on project risk and control, a recent MSc distinction in Project Management and is currently embarking on a second MSc in Psychology.

To see more from Warren, visit: Warren Beardall – projects | within projects (projectswithinprojects.blog)

 

Economic and financial market outlook

Some fascinating insights from Marc Hendriks kicked off acumen7’s June meeting. Marc shared a macroeconomic outlook of the financial markets, and the causes of UK and global inflation. Marc also spoke about why he decided to launch a start-up 18 months ago, GreenGrowth Investments and highlighted the challenges so far. Marc is the Co-Founder and CIO of GreenGrowth, which offers a pioneering investment app enabling retail investors to invest sustainably based on their lifestyle. GreenGrowth aims to make sustainability the new normal for investing, and allows everyday retail investors to participate by investing into these solutions, letting them have a positive impact and healthy financial returns.

For more information on GreenGrowth Investments, visit: Ethical Investment – GreenGrowth

 

An introduction to AECOM

acumen7 member Giles Price hosted this month’s meeting at AECOM’s London office, where Giles is the CTO for Europe and International. AECOM partners with those who want to make a positive difference as they lead the change towards a more sustainable and equitable future. As the world’s trusted infrastructure consulting firm, AECOM is one team driven by a common purpose in everything they do: Delivering a better world.

For more information on AECOM, visit: https://aecom.com/