Our 2024 B Corp Impact Report

Overview and reflections: The development of our team, both individually and as a collective, is a studio priority. Training and personal growth play a key role in fostering a communicative and collaborative workplace. We have weekly studio meetings and open design crits to keep people up to date and give everyone an opportunity to contribute to the design discourse, as well as using surveys and biannual appraisals to provide support and feedback frameworks for employees.  

We have made significant progress in expanding our staff’s skill sets through structured in-house learning, for example wide-ranging Sustainability sessions, BIM training, Passivhaus training and sessions to keep the studio conversant with Fire and Principal Designer regulation changes. Those undertaking our research projects, such as Measuring Mass Timber and Woods Into Management, immerse themselves in these specialist worlds and feed back to the wider studio on learnings and best practice. We endeavour to keep ourselves awake to the non-architectural world around us by taking short courses including those covering EDI awareness and Cyber Security.  

Areas of improvement: The year ahead will be about strengthening our team’s confidence, focusing more on workplace well-being, and assessing the strength and weaknesses of our company EDI Policy. We have already built more rigour and monitorability around our Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme and are in the process of standardising Personal Competency assessments at management level, all with a view to introducing better record-keeping of professional development and skills management across all levels.  

Overview and reflections: dRMM’s approach to serving our community and clients is underpinned by our commitment to learning through feedback and prioritising the quality of life for those impacted by our work. This year, we conducted Post Occupancy Evaluations (POEs) for our completed buildings including  WorkStack, Maggie’s Oldham, and  Wick Lane, where we aimed to gather valuable insights into their environmental performance and their influence on users. These findings inform not only our ongoing projects but also our future design practices. 

dRMM’s focus on sustainable, responsible architecture is also seen in our commitment to initiatives like the End Gas Now pledge. This pledge aligns with our broader goal of reducing the environmental impact of our buildings and our work practices. Additionally, charitable donations to organisations like Architects Declare, ACAN, and LETI further solidify our dedication to enhancing the quality of life in the built environment. 

Areas of improvement: Our work with POEs continues to demonstrate our commitment to understanding the long-term impact of our projects on users and the environment. This year, our main focus areas have been further supported by the launch of the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard (NZCBS) – we have applied to be a pilot project for this and value the framework. Our goal is to be able to conduct more thorough and layered studies into how buildings are used by the communities we design them for.  

We have already done this on our WorkStack GLA report, where we were commissioned to evaluate the performance of the building’s design. The GLA’s interest stems from the issues surrounding the provision of high-quality light industrial workspaces in London, which are increasingly becoming rare and expensive for SMEs to rent. Their interest in WorkStack has been in its potential to be replicated as a typology on other similar sites in London. In particular they are interested in its efficiency as a stacked arrangement on a small footprint, providing the potential for an economically viable solution for developers. As part of their need to understand WorkStack’s viability better they are also interested in its usability as a functional workspace, energy efficiency and carbon footprint. We also looked at how the building’s design and client GEB’s ‘good landlord’ model support diversity amongst SMEs. We see this report, which will be published in 2025, as a strong precedent for how we can measure the success of our designs typologically and materially. 

Overview and reflections: Addressing environmental impact remains at the heart of dRMM’s activities, approach and ethos. This year, we continued making significant strides in carbon reduction on our designs – which is where we know we can have the biggest measurable environmental impact. A recent in-house exercise looking at a handful of our past projects demonstrated how design outcomes have gradually improved. More importantly, they are improving in the right direction, getting closer to meeting the main criteria for the recently published NZCBS. 

The Measuring Mass Timber project is also pivotal in our advocacy for the use of natural materials in construction, and the general need for sectoral decarbonisation while putting people at the forefront. It demonstrates, through five case studies, how timber construction can deliver extensive benefits to both people and environment. By proposing a methodology that brings together POE, environmental conditions monitoring, and whole life carbon assessment, the research brings support to many of the arguments in favour of timber construction. This report will be published in 2025. 

One of the most notable developments has been our work on the new London studio move to Coate Street, Hackney. This relocation provides an opportunity for us to examine and act upon our operational emissions in the long term, particularly those linked to building energy use. It also allowed us to test and evolve our evidence-based design workflows towards reducing whole life carbon in our designs and achieving greater environmental performance. We are actively reviewing our local supply chain and looking at the potential for future upgrades in this regard. 

In terms of how we operate as a business and team, as opposed to our projects’ impact, we are now entering 2025, midway to our Race to Zero commitment of halving our operational emissions by 2030. We have revised our calculation methodology for operational emissions, switching from xTonnes to an in-house tool using the UK government’s official DEFRA and BEIS emissions factors. This provides a better understanding of the sources of our emission with greater transparency and accuracy. Our total yearly emissions increased 8% in 2023/24 and remain 6% below the 2019/20 baseline levels. Emissions per employee dropped nearly 10% year-on-year and are 27% below the baseline. So, while in absolute emissions levels, we are shy of the decarbonisation trajectory needed to reach our 2030 commitment, our relative emissions (per employee) are approximately aligned with that objective. We anticipate significant changes once we move premises. For example, currently our Scope 1 emissions, mostly from gas and refrigerant leaks, are steady but are expected to fall over 95% with the move to Coate Street. Our Scope 2 emissions have dropped 7% year-on-year and are 46% below baseline levels. Our Scope 3 emissions, 82% of the total, have risen slightly due to inflation and increased spending, though business travel and waste emissions fell sharply. 

Areas of improvement: dRMM will continue to explore avenues to decarbonise our operations and ally with like-minded initiatives, such as the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), alongside our possible participation in the NZCBS pilot for the new studio. These efforts are complemented by our evolving approach to procurement and supply chain management, ensuring that our suppliers and partners align with our environmental and social values. Our biggest objective as we move into a new year will be to continue to reduce our office’s carbon footprint, working in the knowledge that our premises move did exert its own carbon load. We have countered this by having a fully retrofitted new studio, with strategies for circularity and re-use being both holistic and detailed. The blueprint for this project as a circular exemplar will be carried into our design approach going forward, and used as evidence to convince stakeholders and clients on the value and achievability of evidence-based design and considered re-use. 

In the coming year, we have set clear targets for advancing our B Corp certification and improving our performance across various metrics. This includes refining our evidence-based design process to further enhance the environmental performance of our buildings; developing tools to track and assess live data on projects; and ensuring that our team is equipped to meet the growing challenges of sustainable architecture. We also aim to strengthen our procurement processes and project tracking systems, creating a more streamlined and transparent approach to meeting both B Corp and NZCBS standards. 

While we continue to focus on positive change, we acknowledge the challenges of the current market conditions. Nonetheless, we remain committed to our long-term sustainability goals, and to keeping relevant our definition of  what “socially useful architecture” is.