The standard is so much more than the sum of the technical parts that made it. Tamsin Tweddell explores the human capabilities which made it possible
The mission had two parts, which at first may seem contradictory: create a standard rigorous enough to be scientifically credible, and accessible enough to drive genuine industry uptake. What made it possible is something the industry rarely talks about.
The creation of the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard brought together eight professional bodies, over a thousand volunteers, and an entire industry’s worth of divergent opinions into a single agreed framework.
These are professional communities which tend to work in silos, with different priorities, different languages, and often different interests.
Better answers, not right answers
As the chair of the governance board told me: “Right from the very start, the mission was not just to create a standard that was technically and rigorously correct, around what a net zero carbon building meant. It was also to use the standard to drive market transformation. Having one without the other would have no real impact on reducing carbon.”
From the outset, the project was structured to hold that tension rather than resolve it prematurely. The technical experts who built the standard were not the same people judging how the market would receive it.
The people tasked with navigating that tension day to day were the technical steering group. They were simultaneously its engine and its conscience, each member bringing deep technical expertise and the mandate of the institution they represented. Beyond that, they also led the working groups of industry volunteers, channelling the knowledge and experience of hundreds of specialists into the standard’s development.
When I spoke to members of the technical steering group, one phrase stood out: “What we’re trying to do here is almost fundamentally… inherently contradictory.” And it appeared that way.
Rigour versus accessibility. Ambition versus adoption. Flexible enough for every context while simple enough to use. Tensions like these ran through every stage of the project. As one member of the group put it: “Two things can both be right at the same time, that might not appear to be compatible.”
Learning to find a path that respected both became one of the defining features of how this group worked. As the challenges the industry faces grow more complex, so does the need for this kind of thinking.
“We were looking for better answers, not right answers.” In a project spanning this many disciplines and perspectives, that distinction mattered.
What struck me in these conversations was how people described feeling genuinely heard. Quieter voices were actively made space for. Disagreement was expected and welcomed. And, when someone changed their mind mid-debate, it was treated as a sign of good thinking, not weakness.
Producing it required a set of capabilities that do not typically appear in any job description
People knew their colleagues had their backs. That combination created something rare: a group where real consensus was possible, rather than just the appearance of it. Decisions were underpinned by a clear process, including formal voting. What made them stick was something less formal: the confidence that every view had been considered.
None of that happens without something to hold it together. While the pull towards entrenched positions is strong, what made a difference here was the shared goal that felt both important and urgent. And the conviction that meaningful progress on net zero could only be made by acting together, at both an individual and institutional level.
The capabilities that don’t appear in any job description
While the standard is technically rigorous and brings together much expert knowledge, producing it required a set of capabilities that do not typically appear in any job description.
The inner development goals framework, developed to complement the UN’s sustainable development goals, recognises that the hardest challenges we face, including climate change, require us to develop ourselves as much as our technical solutions.
The people who built the standard demonstrated many of those inner capabilities, not as a conscious framework, but as a way of working they developed together over several years.
What came through most strongly was trust in each other, the humility to recognise that their view was not the whole picture, and a persistence which kept the group together through four years of genuinely difficult work.
The building industry faces no shortage of complex challenges, of which the road to net zero is one. The human capabilities that made the development of the standard possible – the ability to sit with contradiction, disagree without ego, and keep the shared goal larger than any individual position – are exactly what those challenges require.
The question worth asking is how deliberately we are developing these. And what we could achieve if we did.
Tamsin Tweddell is a former senior partner at Max Fordham LLP. She now works as a leadership and team development coach with leaders and teams across the built environment
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