Environmental Sustainability and Upkeep Training Courses

Upkeep believes that good building maintenance is vital to the long-term sustainability of buildings.  We have been giving this message to delegates on our training courses for as long as we have been providing training - over 15 years.

Since 2005 we have included additional information about environmental sustainability in all our training materials for our City & Guilds courses. We are grateful to the students of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, who helped us with this project.

Buildings make a serious impact on the environment. Constructing, lighting and heating buildings contributes a signficant amount to the UK's carbon emissions.

We decided that Upkeep had an opportunity to provide people with information about the environmental sustainability of existing buildings by including extra material in our training packs.

The Worcester students conducted a six-week survey of non-technical staff working in social housing. The aim was to find out about their levels of awareness of climate change and environmental issues, particularly in relation to the built environment. We found a high level of interest, but also surprisingly little practical knowledge about the key issues.

Following the survey, we decided that Upkeep could add information to its delegate packs on environmental improvements that can be made to existing dwellings, as well as links to websites offering useful information.

Whether people apply this information at work or at home, we hope it will help them make a difference.

If your organisation is doing work on making properties more environmentally sustainable, we'd like to hear from you.