The guest speaker at the 2020 CIBSE Building Performance Awards will be Yewande Akinola MBE, innovation lead at Laing O’Rourke.
The awards will take place at Grosvenor House London on Tuesday 11 February at 7pm, when the winners in 13 categories and an overall winner will be announced.
Akinola is a chartered engineer, innovator and speaker, and her engineering experience includes the design and construction, innovation and manufacture of buildings and systems in the built environment.
She was an environmental services engineer at Arup for eight years, designing water-supply and water-management systems in buildings, before joining Laing O’Rourke as a principal engineer in 2015.
She has worked on projects in the UK, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, and has been named the UK Young Woman Engineer of the Year by the Institution of Engineering & Technology.
Akinola has also been awarded the Exceptional Achiever Award from the Association for BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] Engineers and the Association of Consultancy and Engineering, UK, and is a visiting professor at the University of Westminster.
She is passionate about Stem communication and has presented engineering programmes on television.
In the 2020 New Year Honours list, Akinola was made an MBE for services to engineering innovation and diversity in Stem.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in engineering design and appropriate technology from the University of Warwick, and a Master’s in innovation and design for sustainability from Cranfield University.
New categories The 2020 BPA awards will feature a new Retrofit Project of the Year category, to recognise the importance of reducing the carbon emissions of existing building stock. There is also a new wellbeing category for product and innovation.
To book your place to find out who takes the trophies on the night, and to see the shortlist, visit here.