Penny Gowler named Best Woman in Environment and Sustainability at the Women In Construction & Engineering Awards – Latest

We're so proud to announce that Penny Gowler has been named Best Woman in Environment and Sustainability at the Women In Construction & Engineering Awards! Penny is our Head of Sustainability and has a particular interest in measuring and minimising embodied carbon through good design and incorporating circular economy design principles.

This has recently included leading on the development of our Structural Carbon Tool, which calculates embodied carbon in projects and enables design teams to make better decisions. The tool was released in collaboration with the The Institution of Structural Engineers in 2021 and has been shared with the industry for free. Downloaded by over 6000 engineers and designers around the world, it has been instrumental in enabling practices of any size to easily calculate embodied carbon in their projects.

She also spearheaded our involvement in the Grosvenor-led research on ‘Full Circle to Reuse’, which led to the development of our 12-step guide to make Reuse the norm for the construction industry to address the global climate crisis. It’s an actionable framework to help architects, developers, construction, contractor and demolition firms take steps to implement reuse on their schemes.

While these two initiatives have had a sizeable impact on the industry, Penny’s leadership internally at Elliott Wood has helped to fortify our resolve to do better things for people and the planet. She leads workshops on sustainability for our team and continues to champion and push for us to lead the way on our projects, sharing her know-how and expertise. To cap off a stellar year, Penny was also made a Director in 2021.

Representation matters and Penny is a fantastic role model and champion of women in engineering. We're thrilled to see her recognised!