Improving & Promoting Wellbeing & Diversity in Construction & Property Conference; in association with Stephen George + Partners

MOLA – Amy Atkins, Delivery and Implementation Manager

Amy is the both the Early Careers and Mental Health Lead at MOLA (a major archaeological contractor), giving her unique insight into how workplace training opportunities and wellbeing can go hand in hand. This year Amy has managed the training of 20 new-to-sector trainees from local communities and 25 graduates, and is keen to share the positive impacts this has had for all involved.

Landsec – Mo Kebbay, Diversity & Inclusion Manager

Mo Kebbay is a Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Landsec. With D&I expertise spanning across organisational design, learning and development, training, recruitment and supplier diversity. He is a D&I professional with experience in both the charity and financial services sector. Mo role models inclusive behaviours and is committed to empowering individuals to help build and develop an inclusive and accessible environment that enables everyone to be their best authentic selves.

BAM Construction – Jess Morgan, Community & Education Co-ordinator – Western Region

Specialising in Human Rights & Equality, Jess has led on a number of national positive action programmes that raise aspirations and creates access for disadvantaged groups.  Within her role, she believes in creating a ground up approach, being agile and connecting with communities to positively impact ‘what matters to local people’.  Jess has worked in a number of sectors to include Housing, Sport and Education; and in addition to her work role has had a number of voluntary commitments and board memberships, to include the Welsh Rugby Union Equality Steering Group and Vice Chair of Women in Property.

Homes England – Chris Standish, Senior Community Engagement Manager

Chris is a chartered Town Planner and CIH Member, a member of the NW Design Review Panel and an accredited Community Led Homes Advisor.  Motivated by empowering local communities to transform their places, he joined Homes England in September 2020.  As a senior specialist in the Technical Centre of Excellence, he is responsible for establishing and leading the Community Engagement Team and establishing the agencies approach to community engagement. Prior to Homes England he was Regeneration and Place Lead for a north west housing association where he developed long term transferable approaches to housing led regeneration and transformation.

The Crown Estate – Henrietta Frater, Head of HSE and Wellbeing

The Crown Estate are delivering a £1.5 billion investment and redevelopment plan with sustainability at the centre of their vision, with a commitment to ensure that central London continues to be an outstanding place to work, live and visit. With these high levels of project under their belt, looking after their employees is of utmost priority where mental health is at the forefront. Henrietta is an avid advocate for mental health and wellbeing where she has spoken and implemented actionable processes in place to better support employees.

Leeds Community Homes – Claude Hendrickson, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Associate, Accredited Community Led Housing Advisor

Leeds Community Homes aim to create and enable community-led homes, that are newly built or brought back into use by local people. They collaborate with new scheme providers, councils, developers for ease in the provision of homes benefitting the community. Claude has participated in a number of projects which has transformed the lives of those involved, including- Self build Project, yes Cyber Project and BHI Black Men’s champion. Over the last 15 years, he has worked face-to-face with individuals and groups from all walks of life and backgrounds, with diverse abilities and confidence and have produced consistent outputs in his own work and outcomes for his clients.

Nottingham City Homes – Abigail Greenwood, Construction Employability Officer

More information to follow.

CIOB – Mark Harrison, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Transformation

Mark Harrison is the Head of EDI Transformation for the CIOB, a role that he started in January 2021. It’s a new position for the CIOB and he reports directly to the CEO, Caroline Gumble, demonstrating how seriously the agenda is being taken there. Mark has over a decade’s experience in lead EDI roles in the housing, charity, and higher education sectors. His most recent previous role was with the Alan Turing Institute developing a strategic approach to EDI in this leading national data science research institute. Prior to that, Mark’s role as Head of Inclusion at the University of London saw him develop a new approach to promoting race equality for staff and embedding inclusive services for the institution’s 50,000 international students. Mark also has experience of the built environment sector having worked with Metropolitan Housing Partnership, achieving 5^th place in Stonewall’s highly competitive Workplace Equality Index.

Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing – Fran Goble, Head of Diversity and Inclusion

Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTVH) are committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. They work collaboratively to educate, support and develop all of our diverse employees and the communities that they serve. Fran is a leadership professional specialising in Employee Engagement and Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) areas that she has huge passion for. During her career she has created and delivered true culture change through both strategic and operational solutions. With a background in communications and HR she has a proven track record of consistent delivery of solutions that bring about the reduction of business costs, building better ways of working and creating real culture change.

Stephen George + Partners – Muhammad Khan, Studio Director

Muhammad Khan joined Stephen George + Partners (SGP) in 2020 as a Studio Director based in the London office with close to 18 years of professional experience in project delivery from inception to completion.

Muhammad’s role focuses on SGP’s presence in the south east and London, maintaining and developing relationships with key clients and stakeholders and continuing to deliver the SGP commitment to quality design and practical delivery for our clients.

With experience of design across sectors including mission critical, industrial and logistics, commercial, aviation, retail, residential and healthcare, Muhammad’s focus and is also responsible for developing new business, particularly in areas such as Data Centres, Life Science and Bio-medical.

Muhammad has a particular interest in encouraging and supporting younger architects by mentoring them in collaboration with the RIBA Future Architects Mentoring Scheme with Kingston and London South Bank University. His aim is to create a knowledge share collaborative environment where each member of staff is treated as a valued individual rather than a cog in the machine.

Muhammad is passionate about implementing fair EDI values across the practice by supporting the internal SGP ID group who promote equality, diversity, and inclusiveness within SGP’s offices. He is also part of the Architecture Race Forum administration team as a speaker.

Karbon Homes – Di Keller, Strategic Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead

Di is the Strategic Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead at Karbon Homes, a housing association with 30,000 homes across the North East and Yorkshire. Di is an experienced diversity, inclusion and wellbeing specialist working across private, public and third sector organisations in a broad range of industries. Putting people at the heart of the heart of their work, Di shares her personal and professional experience to create the safe spaces for others to develop their knowledge and understanding in these topics.

Transport for London – Rupali Sharma-Patel, Engineering Lead- Built to Rent, Property Development

More information to follow.

Stephen George + Partners – Nick Austin, Practice Director

Nick joined Stephen George + Partners (SGP) in 2004 as an Architect working on multiple logistics, office and commercial schemes falling under the Design & Build and Traditional procurement routes. In 2009 he moved into a Practice Management role, focusing on contractual documentation and professional indemnity requirements, dealing with complex appointments on multi-million-pound schemes across many sectors.

In 2011 Nick gained a PG Diploma in HR Management and has since, as well as the contractual work, taken on this aspect of the practice across all offices. Dealing with complex re-structures, disciplinaries, performance management and reward, Nick is keen to embed transparent systems which are fair and supportive to all involved leading to clear outcomes.

Outside of the organisation, Nick heads up the Architectural HR Network. Started in 2008, the network now has over 120 architectural practices as members, who discuss all matters to do with human resources. Mainly orientated around the London area, this has now expanded across the UK as meetings are held digitally throughout each year.

In 2018 Nick took over as lead on Social Responsibility at SGP and has since developed many projects to demonstrate the organisations offering. In 2021, SGP’s Schools programme won best Social Responsibility Campaign from The Planet Mark.

Nick qualified as a Mental Health First Aider in 2021, and on the back of which has developed into introducing a practice-wide Mental Health weeks where the topic has been specifically focused on developing an understanding across the organisation.

Women Into Construction – Jacqui Wordsworth, Business Development Director

Jacqui Wordsworth, a qualified Mechanical Engineer, has over 20 years’ experience of developing and delivering successful employment and skills projects in both public and private sector across engineering, construction and the green economy. She has led employment and skills programmes in London including the Gateway to Industry programme which supported over 400 businesses, 15,000 young people and created 500 jobs and was responsible for the development of the LDA’s 2017-13 Adult Employment and Skills programme and Green Skills Strategy. Working with private sector engineering and construction companies such as Carillion & Balfour Beatty Living Places to develop their social value offers, she took this experience to set up her own project management consultancy Gateway to Sustainability Ltd in 2016. As a Director of Women into Construction since 2017, she has helped to develop new programmes and diversify funding streams to enable WiC to support over 500 women a year across the UK

Stephen George + Partners – Kanti Chhapi, Studio Director

More information to follow.

Greater London Authority – Amanprit Arnold, Senior Policy Officer – Infrastructure

Amanprit is an experienced international built environment researcher and strategist with over 10 years’ experience. Most recently, she joined the GLA’s Infrastructure team as a Senior Policy Officer to coordinate and plan delivery of infrastructure across London. Previously, Amanprit was a Senior Manager at ULI and Global Research Manager at RICS.

Amanprit holds an MSc in International Planning from University College London funded by a prestigious global scholarship. She also knows British Sign Language (BSL).

Greater London Authority – Douglas Russell, Workforce Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion Manager

More information to follow.

Southern Housing Group – Rajvinder Uppal, Social Value Lead

Rajvinder has over 20 years experience in the public and charitable sector – working in management. In her role at SHG she is a leader in developing and implementing the Social Value in the Housing sector – developing community cohesion, employment and wellbeing initiatives.