The B Corp movement is sweeping at pace through various sectors – notably food & beverage and responsible fashion – but what about the built environment?  Apart from a few high profile exceptions such as Igloo Regeneration, B Corp hasn’t cut through in our industry. I think this should change.

Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

At this point you might be saying “so, what?” You may have an environmental strategy locked down. You’re likely delivering social value through your projects. So why should you become a B Corp?

The only real response to that is to share our journey and offer our support to those considering it for themselves. 

So, why did we go for it? Stepping towards the process felt like a natural progression. Since Stride Treglown became employee owned we’d been seeking a tool that would help us measure how we are doing socially and environmentally. When I saw Pukka Herbs speak about accreditation, the penny dropped:  this could give us an impartial assessment of our impact across the breadth of our business and show us where we needed to improve. Continual improvement is vital to us: it serves the design process, our people, our clients and their needs, but we needed a framework to hang it all on. 

So we took the plunge and began the process. We’ve always prided ourselves on being ethical and responsible, looking after our staff and designing in a human-centric way, so how hard could it be? Well, it took more than six months and was extremely challenging and rigorous. Every aspect of our business was scrutinised and scored – from staff support programmes and the social and environmental impact of our offices to customer and supply chain processes. At times it wasn’t comfortable. It really forced us to take a deep breath on everything we do.

We passed.  With a respectable score. And joined Kennedy Woods to become only the second architecture practice in the UK to achieve B Corp status. Our Impact Assessment Score now tells us exactly where we need to improve.

So why should other practices join us? Competitive edge? Hopefully it will help us attract socially-conscious talent into future job roles and B Corp status is already opening up new opportunities for us. Investors are certifying so it’s wise to follow the money. But this is bigger than profit. I believe the whole industry is moving from a transactional, dog-eat-dog, race to the bottom culture towards one of cooperation and constant learning. Being part of the B Corp community of knowledge-sharing and common purpose is an important signal from any member that says, ‘we want to own part of that improvement’. It’s purpose, amplified.

And here we come to the most important part of certification. It’s out in the open. Our score is live and accessible for anyone to see. That may strike a bit of fear into anyone considering it, but for us it’s the biggest draw and is exactly what our industry needs: an open, collaborative and amplified movement towards a better built environment. 

If you’d like to know more about our B Corp journey, please get in touch.