Dr Melanie Smith, FRICS, GIFireE, NRAC Consultant, PGCHE, Leeds Sustainability Institute, Leeds Beckett University. Melanie is a Building Surveyor and Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors with over 40 years experience in local authority, private practice, and education sectors. She has been a graduate member of the Institution of Fire Engineers and on the National Register of Access Consultants. Melanie has worked on all types and sizes of buildings for professional services, compliance, fire, access, retrofit, and upgrade purposes, with expertise in conflicting requirements. She has been instrumental in governmental and institutional guidance and codes. Melanie is a member of the Leeds Sustainability Institute, a past Chair of the Yorkshire branch of the RICS Building Surveyors, a Civic Trust Award assessor, and has sat on BSi and RICS working groups. Her doctorate, awarded in 2019, is entitled "A Study of Building Surveying Praxes to Inform Design of Thermal Retrofit". This identifies common shortcomings of retrofit solid wall insulation measures and determines an appropriate approach for pre-design retrofit building surveys.
Prof. Dr Christopher Gorse, MCIOB, MAPM, Leeds Sustainability Institute, Leeds Beckett University. Chris is a Professor of Construction and Project Management at Leeds Beckett University. He is a Chartered Builder with over 30 years industrial and academic experience in buildings, materials, management, and construction law. Chris has written extensively on the construction of domestic and industrial buildings, and the processes required to deliver them successfully and to measure their performance. As Director of the Leeds Sustainability Institute and Head of the Low Carbon Sustainability Research Group, Chris leads one of the most successful building performance research units in the UK. The group has contributed to changes in the Building Regulations, undertaken research and development of new energy-saving products, and successfully secured patents. Chris is the Chair of the international group Sustainable Ecological Engineering Design for Society (SEEDS), leads research for subgroups at the International Energy Agency, and is past Chair of the Association of Researchers in Construction Management and Visiting Professor at the Central University of Technology, Free State South Africa, in the Unit of Lean Construction and Sustainability.
