CWCT AGM 2026

08.45	Registration

09.45	AGM	Saverio Pasetto, Skanska Richard White, RSM David Metcalfe, CWCT

	www.menti.com, code XXXX XXXX

Making sustainability work

10.30	Managing risk in the Refurbishment of Modern Facades	Neil Dobbs Multiplex

11.00	The (re)use of stone: the silver bullet for sustainable facades?	Gianluca Rapone FMDC

11.30	Coffee

12.00	Client view	Matthew Webster British Land

Mental Health

12.30	Mental Health in the Construction Industry	Dr Jennifer Opuko-Lageyre Bloomsbury Therapy Practice

13.00	Lunch

Façade and facades

14.00	Fire and facade assessment Panel Discussion	Camille Destres, BB7 Alan Curran, OFR Consultants, Tony Ryan, Siderise Aaron Dehara, Staticus

Technology in the facade industry

14.45	Risks, Challenges and Opportunities of AI	Simon Pierce Meinhardt

15.15	Cutting No Corners: Fabrication, Decision Making, and Risk in the Era of Digital Tools and AI	Evan Levelle Keyan Rahimzadeh, VIA

15.45	Discussion and closing remarks	David Metcalfe Saverio Pasetto

16.00	End

Please join us for drinks overlooking the river after the event for networking and to continue the discussions from the day.

Speaker Profiles

Neil Dobbs

Neil Dobbs
Head of Facades
Multiplex

Neil leads the facade team at Multiplex overseeing a portfolio of UK projects providing innovation and best practice in design and construction. Neil has over 20 years’ experience in the facade industry working with specialist and main contractors delivering major iconic projects in London.

Gianluca Rapone

Gianluca Rapone
Associate Director
FMDC

Gianluca is an Associate Director at FMDC, one of the top façade and materials consultancies in the UK. He is a façade engineer with a strong background in building envelope physics; before moving to the UK, he completed a PhD in Italy where he studied the optimisation of façade design for energy savings and comfort. Since joining FMDC in 2017, he has been leading the Building Physics team and he has worked on projects across all stages, from concept design to construction. In recent years Gianluca’s keen interest in sustainability and low-carbon design has led him to coordinate FMDC’s efforts in investigating the role of façades in reducing both the operational and embodied carbon of buildings.

Gianluca is also active in the UK construction industry writing and presenting about low carbon envelope design, and he was involved in writing the first ever methodology to calculate embodied carbon of façades.leads the facade team at Multiplex overseeing a portfolio of UK projects providing innovation and best practice in design and construction.

Matthew Webster

Neil Dobbs
Head of Facades
Multiplex

Dr Jennifer Opoku-Lageyre

Dr Jennifer Opoju-Lageyre
Bloomsbury Therapy Practice

Dr. Jennifer Opoku-Lageyre is a Doctor of Psychology, an Associate fellow of the British Psychological Society and EMDR Accredited Europe & Ireland Therapist who has over 18 years of dedicated experience in the mental health sector.

Her career began within the NHS, where she served as a Counselling Psychologist, delivering therapeutic support to individuals navigating a spectrum of psychological challenges, from mild difficulties to complex mental health conditions.

Alongside her clinical practice, she contributed significantly to the professional development of colleagues through training and supervision, fostering professional growth and excellence in care.

Now established exclusively in private practice, Dr. Jennifer Opoku-Lageyre remains deeply committed to advancing mental health awareness. She is passionate about making psychological knowledge accessible and relevant, particularly within organisational settings, where she actively promotes emotional wellbeing and informed dialogue.

Camille Destres

Camille Destres
Director
BB7

Camille is a chartered Facade Engineer with over 15 years’ experience delivering facade projects in all sectors. From her beginnings as a building physics specialist, she has developed her knowledge across all aspects of facade engineering to deliver high-quality design.

Her experience ranges from design of the facade packages of Battersea Power Station to 2 Redman Place in Stratford, a BREEAM outstanding commercial development. Following the completion of the RICS Expert Witness course, she has been involved in forensic and investigative works. She now leads the BB7 Safer Building Design offering, delivering the company’s Fire + Facade integrated approach.

Camille was involved with the Joint Competence Initiative for the Building Envelope (JCI) to develop basic competency testing for the Facade Industry. She is one of the founding members of the Envelope Collective, a group to support women in all roles within the facade industry.

Alan Curran

Alan Curran
Director
OFR Consultants

Alan has over 30 years of construction experience, 23 of which has been involved directly in the field of fire safety design, implementation and passive fire protection having worked for contractors, a product manufacturer and a semi-state client organisation.

Alan previously worked in the Chief Engineers team on Crossrail providing assurance for fire strategy design and implementation on all contracts across the Crossrail project. His responsibilities included stakeholder management and liaison, design development and approval, field assurance and final acceptance of fire assets and handover evidence.

His recent experience includes fire strategy implementation and construction support for landmark projects such as Olympia, Museum of London, Brent Cross, Canada Water, Whiteley’s and various mid to high rise residential schemes along with compliance review, remediation support and expert witness services for various buildings with concerns related to passive fire protection, external wall design and construction detailing.

Tony Ryan

Tony Ryan
Chief Technical Officer
Siderise

Tony Ryan, Chief Technical Officer at Siderise Group is an established technical leader in the construction industry and passive fire protection field. Tony heads a global team of technical experts who provide detailed passive fire specification guidance and training as well as project and product application support through design and installation processes. He has overarching responsibility for technical and site services, sustainability, new product development and product management, R&D, fire testing and technical product training across the Siderise Group.

A qualified engineer, Tony has previously held Technical Director and Head of Fire Engineering roles and has an MBA from Manchester Business School. He has impassioned commitment to fire safety and asset protection, combined with holistic building design, sustainability and innovation.

Aaron Dehara

Aaron Dehara
UK Regional Director
Staticus

Having worked in the UK façade industry for over 15 years, with a background in system design and engineering Aaron oversees the UK project portfolio for one of the largest specialist façade contractors in the UK and Europe. With a growing portfolio of renovation projects, Staticus strive to ensure efficient, innovative and sustainable facade solutions which respond to the ever more complex challenge posed by façade retention, renovation or replacement.

Simon Pierce

Simon Pierce
Director of Facade Engineering
Meinhardt

Simon has extensive leadership experience in UK and international structural and façade engineering activities. They collaborate with leading architects and designers, combining engineering pragmatism with design sensitivity. In recent years, they have focussed on developing empowered teams with a strong sense of process who can respond to emerging challenges, integrating sustainability concerns into project decision-making.

With a diverse experience of traditional and novel materials and construction methods, they strongly believe in challenging convention to reveal creative solutions to society’s most critical issues. Currently based in London, they are responsible for the Meinhardt UK façade team. Passionate about social outcomes, they look to making meaningful environmental and social impacts on every project they undertake, whilst championing engagement with equity, diversity and inclusion in their work.

They are a Chartered Engineer with the Institution of Civil Engineers, having studied Civil and Structural Engineering at the University of Leeds.

Evan Levelle

Evan Levelle
Principal
VIA

Evan is one of the founding Principals of VIA, a global design and technical consultancy specialising in advanced facades and building envelopes with offices in London, Hong Kong, Seoul, San Francisco, Dubai, Taipei, and New York. His work has primarily focused on designing bespoke and complex cladding systems globally, developing and implementing strategies for global sourcing of materials and systems, and leading various projects for specialist contractors.

Evan has a passion for, and a deep understanding of, the technology and processes that drive innovation in construction, shaped by his extensive experience on sites, in factories, and in computation.

Before founding VIA, he worked for Front, managing various offices worldwide. Earlier in his career, Evan earned his degree in architecture from the Georgia Institute Technology and, before entering the world of facades and construction, co-founded a VC backed technology startup in San Francisco.

Keyan Rahimzadeh

Keyan Rahimzadeh
Principal
VIA

Keyan Rahimzadeh is a Principal and Global Technical Director at VIA, where he leads technology strategy, software development and technical initiatives across the firm's international offices. Trained as both a structural engineer and an architect, he has spent 15 years working across computation, design and fabrication — delivering high-profile projects at Front, Inc. in New York and London, leading Computational Design at Grimshaw, and heading the software team at a startup building AI for the AEC industry.

At VIA he oversees the firm's in-house tooling, process, and automation — from advanced modelling and analysis through to ML and AI initiatives. He also leads development of free software that VIA publishes for data-rich 3d modelling work, which has been downloaded over half a million times and is used in design and engineering practices around the world daily.