Kate is a built environment professional with 18 years of experience in real estate. Kate’s career after a physics degree, began with developers and then as a mixed-use asset manager in large portfolios of property.  In 2010 she became a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor MRICS and has mentored and coached others through chartership.  The significant shift for Kate arrived in 2013, with the frustration of a lack of good communication between the developers and occupiers knowing where meters were or how to use solar panels. This led Kate to move from a corporate developer (FTSE 100) to pursue an Engineering Doctorate.  The golden thread of information between accountable, responsible and informed stakeholders was a key part of Kate’s move and future work as a skilled communicator.  

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While embedded in the award winning University of Reading’s Energy and Sustainability team for 4.5 years she delivered considerable change.  Training the team in the use of indoor environmental sensors, post occupancy evaluation and use of metering data, she became a coach and educator.  Pursuing energy projects and data to better understand the performance gap between design of operations and actual energy use she specifically understands occupancy patterns and energy behaviours. Presenting her doctoral findings to senior stakeholders, students and operational staff she was able to demonstrate the value of post occupancy evaluation.  Her work included not usually heard from voices such as cleaners, porters, security and maintenance staff.  Working with an experimental psychology professor for the whole of her doctorate significantly shaped Kate’s views on assumptions, biases and information often taken for granted.  Kate’s occupancy, lighting and energy behaviour research was published in several journals, using statistical methods and qualitative interviews.

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Educating students online at University College of Estate Management, Kate is an Associate Lecturer and was a Module Leader.  Kate’s approach to learning has always been one of creating module content empathetically.  She always puts herself in the position of the learner, knowing they may well have English as an additional language, or be meeting the learning for the very first time as a topic. In 2022, Kate won the Harold Samuel Research Prize from the University College of Estate Management. Her work, titled “UK construction Workplace Poverty: the impact of financial and job insecurity on mental health in UK construction workers” was completed as a publication, and she then presented it at ARCOM in 2023.  Kate was subsequently recruited to lead-author a sustainability strategy as a practice paper about UCEM’s sustainability journey for a further UCEM research project.

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Kate works part time for Arup, a sustainable development design consultancy, as a building performance engineer.  She creates metering and smart strategies for estates of mixed use. In addition, she has worked on decarbonisation projects looking at data gathering and the golden thread of information. Using workshops for facilitating a double diamond process is a part of her method, alongside ensuring diverse participation.  Kate leads the learning module content and creation for the human health and wellbeing skills network across Arup. Leading the Building Use Surveys and occupier survey work for the team, she understands how to convey information to wide audiences.