BRE Flood Resilience Visit

BRE Innovation Park

A view of the BRE Innovation Park

On 12 September members of the People & Communities Technical Committee and other delegates spent a very interesting day at the BRE Innovation Park outside of Watford.   On arrival we were greeted by Dr Jo Prior who has spent over 32 years working at BRE.   After the usual registration formalities we all headed for the James Willmott building where our event was to be held.

After Dr Kemi Adeyeye's introduction, Jo opened the proceedings with a history of BRE and an introduction to BREAM [Presentation].

Dr Stephen Garvin then gave us a very interesting presentation on Building Resilience into the Built Environment.  Stephen has spent over 28 years at BRE and is based in their East Kilbride offices in Scotland [Presentation].

Delegates questions and discussions continued on into the working lunch which followed Stephen's talk. 
After lunch, and feeling fully refreshed, the delegates were led on a tour of the Innovation Park by John O'Brien who gave a presentation prior to the tour [Presentation].

One of the main attractions of our tour was the BRE Flood Resilient Repair Home featuring kitchen appliances mounted at worktop height, electrical sockets and switches mounted higher up the wall, one-way valves in the main drains to prevent water ingress into the home amongst other features.

 

We were also able to look around the other houses on the BRE Innovation Park.  These structures are not permanent fixtures and after research has been concluded they are removed to make way for new innovations.  Here are some photos from the event.