Continuing Professional Development: Why CPD is key to our practice

CPD (Continuing Professional Development) is a professional requirement for all architects. The RIBA asks for 35 hours a year and the ARB asks for a minimum of 8 sessions in a year.  This year, the ARB and RIBA have introduced mandatory topics – fire and life safety, and environmental sustainability – that must be covered by all.

In line with our mission of Responsible and Beautiful, at Collective Works the topics for 2024 are the cornerstones of our continuous learning.

Alasdair recently reflected on the importance of these two topics for the profession and suggests how architects can engage in CPD.

Our environmental predicament

We find ourselves in a troubling era as the role of human influence on planetary health becomes abundantly clear. The risks we are all taking by disrupting the ecosystems we rely on for clean air, food and a stable climate cannot be understated.

The root of this predicament can be traced back to the 15th century idea that humans are separate from nature. Since then, society has been conditioned to consider itself that way and, perhaps unsurprisingly, has acted accordingly, treating nature as a resource to be plundered despite warnings of the consequences.

Things are changing however and recently even the editors of Oxford English Dictionary were persuaded to address this issue. Their primary definition of nature still places humans in opposition to nature, but in response to evidence to the contrary they have now agreed to restore a definition recognising that humans are part of the natural world.

Our impact and agency

So, what does all that have to do with architects, and in particular the CPD they undertake?

Of course, it’d be absurd to suggest that architects can singlehandedly heal our rift with nature, but to suggest that an architect’s decision making has little impact on resource use or e­cosystem health is equally shortsighted.

We are regularly reminded that the built environment contributes around 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint and is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. The attribution of this figure will vary but it’s broadly accepted that architects, alongside other built environment professionals, will have a far larger carbon and ecological footprint resulting from the decisions they take at work, than the decisions they take at home.

Knowing what we do about our impact and our agency, it’s clearly time to rise to the challenge of rapidly decarbonising our built environment, and improving our relationship with nature, as advised by the IPCC, CCC, UK government, and many others.

An established subject

Thankfully, parts of our profession have been progressing this agenda since the early 1970s. ‘Long life, loose fit, low energy’ was the mantra tabled then, and many forward-thinking practices and educators have held similar values for decades. They may not have seen themselves as environmental activists, but many in our profession have been selflessly developing naturally inspired, low carbon solutions, despite little demand or recognition for doing so.

Their collective effort has put us in a far better position than many other sectors who are only recently coming round to the impact of their work. We should build on the accumulated knowledge of our peers, realign our canon to recognise their work, and continue being part of the solution.

An abundance of CPD

Nowadays the range of CPD addressing sustainability is vast. Our practice has recently been covering natural materials, retrofit, embodied carbon, airtightness, Passivhaus, social value, biodiversity net gain, and inclusion, amongst other things.

Within the practice we generally do at least one monthly CPD activity, and always leave room for discussion afterwards, which allows us to test the ideas we’ve heard and figure out how to embed new practices.

There are many other ways to learn of course, with traditional lectures and seminars now supplemented by short courses, workshops, on demand content, podcasts, walking tours, and much more. This variety of content is surely positive given both the neurodiversity and different learning styles that exist within any professional community.

Lastly the advent of knowledge communities, such as the Architects Climate Action Network, now make it easier to develop expertise with others outside your practice on a similar learning path, as well as sharing experiences about the numerous opportunities for gaining CPD that exist.

Sustainability and safety

While many were waking up to the seriousness of the environmental crisis over the last decade, we also saw the Grenfell tower tragedy unfold, which exposed a systemic lack of care afforded to social housing tenants in the UK.

The resulting Building Safety Act rightly increases accountability across the sector and gives the ARB increased authority to monitor and assess the competence required of architects across their careers. With this new regulation comes an opportunity for our sector to improve its standing in society, and its relationship to nature, by better respecting both the health of our buildings’ occupants and our planet’s resources.

At a time when many architects are feeling burdened by additional legislation, I believe that focusing on our shared sense of professionalism and duties to people and planet is essential. Improving our collective decision making and increasing competence in building safely and sustainability surely represents the best way to equip architects to push back against the narrowing of their role and remain indispensable within a 21st century design team.

Alasdair Ben Dixon