Futurebuild 2025
The Concrete Centre is championing concrete innovation at Futurebuild 2025 with both a Concrete Futures exhibition and a plethora of latest best practice guidance and advice. Come and see us on Stand D30.
Speaking sessions within Futurebuild programme
The Concrete Centre, and its sister organisations MPA Precast and MPA Masonry are delighted to curate speaking sessions within the Futurebuild programme. Details of these are below.
Date Tuesday 4 March
Time 10:30 - 11:15
Location Materials Impact Stage, ExCeL, London
Chair Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture and Sustainable Design, The Concrete Centre
Overview
In October 2020, the UK concrete and cement industry launched a roadmap to become net negative by 2050, removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits each year. This session will provide the latest update on the progress being made. It will also introduce new guidance for specifying sustainable concrete, and a deeper dive into new opportunities and recent initiatives for greater and alternative uses of limestone, calcined clays, recycled concrete fines and stock-piled fly ash to achieve lower carbon concrete.
Programme
10:30 - 10.35 Introduction and welcome - Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture and Sustainable Design, The Concrete Centre
10:35 - 10.50 UK concrete and cement industry roadmap to beyond net zero – an update on progress - Dr. Diana Casey, Executive Director, Energy and Climate Change, Cement and Lime, Mineral Products Association
10:50 - 11:05 The changing landscape of supplementary cementitious materials to achieve lower carbon concrete - Gareth Wake, Director, MPA Ready-Mixed Concrete
11:05 - 11:15 An easy guide to specifying sustainable concrete - Hannah Fothergill-Wilson, The Concrete Centre
Date Wednesday 5 March
Time 10:30 - 11:15
Location Materials Impact Stage, ExCeL, London
Chair Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture and Sustainable Design, The Concrete Centre
Overview
Precast concrete offers all the associated efficiency and construction benefits associated with Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), with additional performance benefits related to durability, fire and climate change resilience. And the range of lower carbon solutions is expanding.
But the carbon credentials of structures using precast concrete do not just rely on the carbon intensity of the materials in manufacture. There are many steps that the design team can take in their early design decision that can reduce the embodied carbon of precast concrete. This session explores how, including industry initiatives for further progress and recent project exemplars.
Programme
10:30 - 10.35 Introduction and welcome - Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture and Sustainable Design
10.35 - 10.45 Recent initiatives and industry progress - Mark Shepherd, Director, MPA Precast
10:45 - 11:00 Decarbonising precast concrete through specification and design – top tips - Dan Evans, Board Director & Alexander Lorincz, Senior Technician, Curtins Engineering
11:00 - 11:15 Decarbonising precast concrete in action - speaker TBC
Date Thursday 6 March
Time 10:30 - 11:15
Location Materials Impact Stage, ExCeL, London
Chair Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture and Sustainable Design, The Concrete Centre
Overview
The government has committed to delivering the most ambitious housebuilding program in two generations. To be sustainable, these new homes must help mitigate climate change and be resilient to its impacts. This session explores how both criteria can be addressed using masonry construction and reports on a recent national survey to determine the needs of the people living in these homes.
Programme
10.30 - 10.35 Introduction and Welcome - Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture & Sustainable Design, and Chair of the MPA Housing Forum
10.35 - 10:45 Future Homes - what we need - Matt Butcher, Campaigns and Communications Manager, UK Concrete
10:45 - 11:00 Embodied carbon of masonry construction explained - Steve Callow, Manager, Masonry & Concrete Products, MPA
11:00 - 11:15 Embedding climate change resilience using masonry - Anvit Gadkar, Technical manager, MPA Masonry
Date: Thursday 6 March
Time: 14:45 - 15:00
Location Materials Impact Stage, ExCeL, London
Speaker Elaine Toogood, Director, Architecture and Sustainable Design, The Concrete Centre
Overview
This presentation will share some of the areas of research, development and trials for alternative uses of waste concrete. It includes the potential manufacture of new cementitious material, carbon capture, and use in the manufacture of new concrete whether as enhanced recycled aggregate or recycled concrete paste as a cement replacement.