Surveyor profile

BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY

KRYSTYNA RAWICZ’S COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY EXTENDS RIGHT ACROSS HER PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL LIFE.

KRA Visionary Project Partners works mainly with commercial clients, focusing on building surveying and project management. Founding Director Krystyna Rawicz and her colleagues have also long been interested in sustainability, and launched sister company KRA Renewables in 2017 to offer solutions to existing and new clients looking to start their own sustainability journey.

Finding the right solution Because the right solution is different for every building, Krystyna and her colleagues take an individual approach, which draws on core surveying skills: “We ask what makes sense with this building, with the fabric, with the roof. It’s based on those relationships of trust with clients who value your professional advice, which every surveyor will recognise. You’re able to bring a rounded, coherent picture to the client who may have thought about doing something, but doesn’t know how”. It’s about starting a conversation, she says: “If we’re doing a building survey, we might mention that there are things that would make the building more energy efficient, and if they’re interested in pursuing this, we can advise them further”.

SURVEYOR PROFILE

Ann-Marie Hardiman Managing Editor, Think Media She gives as an example ongoing work that KRA is doing for Nissan, which began with just such a conversation and has led to a programme of work including retrofitting Nissan’s Park West headquarters with rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, installing electric vehicle (EV) chargers, and implementing water-saving measures. The building is now generating 40% of its electricity needs, thus making significant savings. This is a powerful incentive for firms that might be unsure about the initial, often significant, investment involved.

Sustainability in house KRA also applies this message closer to home, from working with the management company that runs their own head office to improve the industrial estate by adding solar PV, increased planting on verges, and even beehives, to supporting environmental charities. Krystyna has also completed a Certificate in Business Sustainability with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Management, and the company is working to get LEED Green Associate Accreditation. Ultimately, these skills will be crucial to surveying in the future: “As senior property professionals, clients come to us for advice that is slightly outside our core areas. It's our obligation to know the answers or to be able to find the answers and advise the client properly. We encourage all of our employees to upskill in sustainability. It's not a ‘nice to have’ – you have to upskill”. Unusual beginnings After completing a degree in modern history and economics, a desire to work with people led Krystyna to Birmingham City Housing Department as a graduate trainee building surveyor. In Birmingham she worked across different departments from finance to health and safety, while studying part-time for a degree in building surveying. She stayed in Birmingham for a number of years before moving to Ireland in 1994 as Head of the Building Surveying Department at Hamilton Osborne King (now Savills), before leaving in 2000 to set up KRA. In her spare time, Krystyna spends time with her four children and two grandchildren, reads, grows vegetables, walks the dog and has recently taken up beekeeping.

Krystyna’s personal passion on this issue is very evident: “We are using up the Earth's resources on an unsustainable level. I have to do what I can. I’ve installed solar PV on my house. I grow my own veg. We can’t all live in sackcloth, but we can try and make conscious decisions and be as sustainable as possible”.