Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Active Travel Healthy Buildings
73 Plays4 years ago
GUEST / JAMES NASH / ACTIVE TRAVEL EXPERT
- https://activetravelscore.com/
- https://www.bikedocksolutions.com/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/activescore/
HOST MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to episode 36 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and interiors.
Host Introduction: Matt Morley
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico Healthy Buildings and Biofit Wellness Concepts.
Interview with James Nash
00:00:27
Speaker
This week, I'm in the UK talking to James Nash, founder of Active Score, an expert in the benefits of active travel for people and planet. He's the founder of Active Score, which was once Cycling
Exploring Active Score Certification
00:00:40
Speaker
School. It's an active travel certification system for real estate developers and landlords, aiming to be a global standard for active travel. He's a serial cycling entrepreneur with 15 years of history behind him, both on the product and service side.
00:00:54
Speaker
He's an advocate for using one's own steam to get to and from work, obviously, albeit with the exception of e-scooters, which would be a kind of a last minute addition to that concept, as we'll see in the discussion.
Post-COVID Active Travel Demand
00:01:05
Speaker
The culture of active travel as part of green and healthy buildings is driving up rents and lease lengths on the one side for developers and landlords, whilst worker demand is booming on the other side, especially in the post-COVID era. Just more people want to avoid public transport in the mornings and evenings.
00:01:20
Speaker
City planners are already specifying active travel facilities in the new buildings. This trend is not going away. In fact, I think it represents a fundamental shift in how we think about both where we live and where our workplace is in relation to where we live and therefore how we interact with the city's transport network.
Engagement and Subscription Invitation
00:01:37
Speaker
If you like this type of content, please hit subscribe. Our contact details, that's both myself and for James, are in the show notes. Let's talk active travel.
Defining Active Travel
00:01:48
Speaker
James, it's a hot topic at the moment, but the idea of active travel and how it aligns with, perhaps distinguishes itself from just pure cycling. So why don't we start with the basics? Like how do you as an expert in this field, how do you define the term active travel?
James Nash's Journey into Active Travel
00:02:04
Speaker
Okay, so active travel is any traditional or any non-motorized, or cars, trains, public transport, or buses for example, is anything that isn't that. So any small, can be a lightweight, with a very small motor, like an e-scooter, through to even running, walking, or cycling, to a building, or former building.
00:02:28
Speaker
And so your background particularly then has obviously become or has been your area of expertise for a while now. How did you get into it? What was your path into this? It's still relatively niche, right? Yes, it is niche. Well, the journey started around about 15, 16 years ago. I should really know that. When I was at university, I did a business management degree and I went into rating and
00:02:58
Speaker
Going into my final year, when I was in to England, I went to Vienna of all places and I was just struck by how popular cycling was there.
00:03:08
Speaker
And obviously everyone thinks of Holland being very kind of bike friendly, but I was quite just surprised. And it was the first time I'd seen a bicycle rental system on the street. So I just thought, bikes, this is going to come to the UK at some point. And it just stuck in my mind.
From Bicycle Parking to Active Score
00:03:25
Speaker
And then as part of a final year project, I had to come up with a business idea.
00:03:31
Speaker
So myself and six others in our group, if you like, at university in our final year had to come up with a business idea. And ours was coming up with a bicycle parking product, which we designed. Unfortunately, it was the worst mark of our whole degree, that kind of module, if you like. So it's quite ironic. But we weren't prepared. The two of us left university and we decided to set up a business selling bicycle parking products.
00:04:01
Speaker
And we did that for the best part of 10 years and that grew and made most of obviously the kind of uptick we saw in cycling across the UK over the past sort of, we've seen it for about 15 years now. But then it got to the point about four or five years ago when we saw the opportunity for a certification within active travel.
Educating on Active Travel Benefits
00:04:23
Speaker
So we launched what was cycling school and is now active school.
00:04:28
Speaker
So you've done both sort of the product development piece as an entrepreneur and then you've moved, always as an entrepreneur, into more of the, in a sense, these certification systems are an attempt to lead the industry, right? Nudge it in the right direction. Correct. We noticed that we, for the business that we are still on, we have a business partner called Bike Doc Solutions. So it's a product seller of bike racks and
00:04:56
Speaker
bicycle parking products and we noticed that day in day out we were given advice to architects on how to best lay out cycle facilities or active travel facilities within commercial and residential buildings off the large scale sort of the skyscrapers you see all around London or any other major cities so we realized there is an opportunity and a lack of knowledge of how to do this so that was really the I suppose the
00:05:25
Speaker
brainwave or the light bulb moment that there really needs to be an educational tool for the market, the real estate market and so he started cycling school.
Government and Developer Roles in Active Travel
00:05:36
Speaker
Within that then, how do you position and in a sense pitch or sell the idea of just how important these facilities are because
00:05:45
Speaker
Effectively, if they're not present in the new buildings being constructed in a city center, wherever that may be around the UK, or indeed globally, if they're not there, then that limits the number of active commuters. In fact, you're playing a part in that wider shift. So is that typically the main way that you promote the importance of it, or are there other angles that are missing?
00:06:08
Speaker
No, I think that's the main way. I think after a long, it's probably taken too long, but I think the government or planning authorities, if you like, have
00:06:19
Speaker
really got to grips with this over the past 15 years in terms of how important putting in the infrastructure is into buildings so storage for bikes for example or soon to be storage for e-scooters they genuinely have really really started to make very quite demanding I'd say kind of requirements for bike racks for new builds and I'll say that's really made developers
00:06:49
Speaker
get their head around, well, why are we being asked to do this? What is the reason? Because if you're a developer, you don't really want, you'd rather be putting in more flats or more retail space than putting in bicycle parking or bicycle storage. But I'd say now the lags is actually over the past 10 years, planners have been asking for it and developers have been putting it in. But now they're, because this infrastructure has been put in and the investments happened, and the culture has come through of active travel, slowly but surely,
00:07:20
Speaker
There's now a real business case for putting in good active trail facilities within buildings for the landlords because they realise that if they put them in, they can achieve higher rents and longer leases for their tenants or their residents because it's what people want now.
00:07:37
Speaker
So you've got city planning making a certain number of prescriptions. They're saying, look, we recommend X. And how do they formulate that? Is it sort of like per square meter per square foot calculations or is it? Yes, that's correct. So if it's a residential, it varies up and down the UK and it varies across the world as it should do, because
00:07:58
Speaker
cycling and active travel cultures are different city to city, country to country. So it's important that there are different standards out there because you don't want to be oversubscribing the number of bike parking spaces within a building or undersubscribing.
00:08:14
Speaker
So it is usually made based on a figure, so it needs to be out of a block of, say, a thousand apartments that get built. The planning authority would say, we'll only grant you planning permission if you provide two bike parking spaces per apartment. These aren't kind of like, oh, we'd like you to do this, but we'll give you planning anyway.
00:08:40
Speaker
you have to do it now. So for example, 22 Bishopsgate, which is a commercial development in London, the largest office building in Europe now, has actually got 1,700 bike parking spaces within it. And that is because they had to do it for planning. So it goes to show. And the thing is, at the moment, is there too many spaces in there for the use? There probably is. However, in five years' time,
00:09:09
Speaker
or 10 years' time, will there be an underutilization? Absolutely not.
Planning Regulations and Active Travel
00:09:15
Speaker
With the way active travel is going, those spaces will get filled. So there needs to be an element of future-proofing to these new developments that are coming along. Got it. Okay. And so who would you say is sort of leading the charge? Is it more planning in terms of how aggressive and ambitious they're being?
00:09:33
Speaker
or obviously that can be geographic specific to each location or is it more the LEED green building certifications, the BRIAM certifications, the well healthy building certifications all have
00:09:46
Speaker
component for this in terms of recommendation. So you can get some guidance from that and if a developer is doing those certs then they're in. But how do you see those two? Are they completely aligned? I'd say overall they are aligned. I'd say out of the two who developers listen more to, I'd say it's the planners. So the planners have the full control because at the end of the day if you don't meet their planning requirements
00:10:10
Speaker
They won't let you build your building. So they're the most important, I'd say. And the fact that, particularly in, say, London, their demands are very demanding. And a lot of our clients often will get us involved because they want to sense check some of the numbers because they're putting an application for planning and then realise how many bike racks they have to provide. And they'll think, well, is this actually feasible?
00:10:39
Speaker
So often we'll work with them to get their heads around it and to explain that, yeah, these are, you can't think about these spaces for
Designing for Active Commuting
00:10:47
Speaker
now. You've got to think of the next 10 years. And then when they realize actually the long-term value for putting in these spaces now, they're a lot more comfortable with agreeing to it and stopping argument with the local authority or often the planners who are asking for these to go in there. However, I'd say secretary to that,
00:11:06
Speaker
I suppose yourself, you know how popular now these green certifications are, and the health and wellbeing ones like Wellbleed, Brienne. They're slowly but surely putting more importance on active travel. So they're really beginning to understand its importance in improving buildings overall, whether it's for the sustainability side of things or the health and wellbeing side of things.
00:11:33
Speaker
If we, if we leave the certifications aside for a minute, because in a sense, you know, there's still privately operated private businesses that, that need X number of people signing up and it, and it's in their interests that as many people as possible get high grades because it sort of creates that positive energy, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, we have to take it, I think with a pinch of salt, but let's leave that aside. And I give you a blank slate on a new bill construction in a prime location in a, in a,
00:12:01
Speaker
medium to large city, somewhere in the UK, you apply your active score thinking, you apply what you know, and we need, what else is there beyond just bike racks and bike spaces? Cause I know there's a lot more to it. When you see some of the examples on your site, I mean, you can do some really funky stuff. You could make it really interesting spaces, right? So paint us, paint us that picture. Sure. So yes. So for example, um,
00:12:25
Speaker
In terms of overall, it's important to bear in mind as well that what makes an active of a really good active travel facility isn't just the infrastructure. So when I say infrastructure, I mean the tangible things you can see and you can touch.
00:12:38
Speaker
So they're extremely important. So for our certification, they're worth 70% of what we score. However, on top of that, I'll go into more detail about what makes good infrastructure in a minute, but on top of that, what is very important is services. So it's the softer measures within a building. So 20% of what we score, for example, is the active travel services. So is there a bicycle maintenance mechanic that can come to the building
00:13:07
Speaker
once every quarter or once every six months. Is there a laundry service provided for the tenants within a building or residence? So it's these softer measures as well. So that's something else we really want to see. And the final 10% is future-proofing. So what we want to see is that there's a plan in place that the building has to cope with the increase in active travel that we're going to see going forward. It's so important, especially now with
00:13:34
Speaker
the post-pandemic era where active travel has seen a real big uptick. It's probably sped things up by at least probably five years in a lot of areas, I'd say, in terms of the popularity. So it's not just infrastructure, it's the overall picture of the softer measures as well. But in terms of blank canvas, infrastructure-wise, that's what everyone thinks of when they want to see, it needs good access. So ideally we don't want to be having people who are going via active travel
00:14:03
Speaker
crossing with motor vehicles. We want to have it set completely separated so their own entrance so there's no risk of being hit by a car for example. We want security to be good so at least two layers of security because unfortunately a lot of the methods of active travel such as cycling or e-scootering
00:14:25
Speaker
they obviously bikes and e-scooters do get stolen very often. So security is extremely important. We like to see two layers of security. So it's a lot harder for someone just to get in, take a bike or an e-scooter and get out. Once you're inside the facility,
00:14:41
Speaker
What we would love to see is a mixture of racking systems. So we'd like to see low level racking systems and what this enables is for people who may not be able to lift the bike or maybe have three wheel bikes or trikes, for example, to be able to park their bikes securely. We like to see e-screw track starting to appear, especially as, although there are illegal modes now,
00:15:08
Speaker
building managers need to start thinking about them because within the next year it's pretty much guaranteed that personal e-scooters are going to be legalised in the UK. We also would like to see, if it's a commercial office space, we want to see good high quality showers as well. That's important so that people will encourage the cycle. There's no barrier there to think, oh, I'm not going to ride my bike this morning because
00:15:32
Speaker
I can't shower when I get to work. We want to see good shower facilities. Lockers are very important because lockers so that people can
00:15:42
Speaker
store their items or clothing. So for example, some people may choose to run into work and then have a shower. So what we want to see is enough lockers so that cyclists, if you want to put their helmets and their bite lights or whatever it might be in a locker, obviously do have a locker, but then we need an over provision so that runners can actually have a locker as well.
00:16:06
Speaker
And then on top of all of that, in terms of that's the product we'd like to see, we'd like to have a really nice look and feel where possible. So by this, we want
Investing in Active Travel Facilities
00:16:17
Speaker
to see the spaces to be not just whitewash blank walls, that traditionally is what you get.
00:16:23
Speaker
and are pretty uninspiring. We want them to look more like front of house. So if you went into an apartment block or you went into a reception of a commercial building, we'd like to see the active travel spaces looking more like that. So some colour and make them inviting. Some of our clients have even chosen to have music playing in their active travel facilities now. So it really is like front of house as we think it should be. So in terms of the infrastructure, that is what we'd like to see.
00:16:53
Speaker
interesting. There's so much crossover with with kind of, yeah, I wouldn't go down into the basement necessarily and try and design what you're designing, right. But look, for example, my one of my big things, apart from trying to always squeeze in a wellness room or some kind of an office gym space, right, where incidentally,
00:17:09
Speaker
having your facilities on the basement level, for example, having changing rooms, showers, lockers, all of that helps. Because then if you've got, I don't know, a yoga class where you have got a gym space elsewhere in the building, you then kind of double up in terms of the usability of those spaces. But then stairwells is the other thing. I'm always, stairwells, they're this hidden piece of a building, right? And we all know about the 10,000 steps. We all know, like,
00:17:35
Speaker
It's probably best to take the stairs, even if it's four or five floors of difference to get to your next meeting, whatever it might be, but most people take the lifts. Why? Because they look like back of house. They look terrible. Nobody bothers designing them. There's never any music or plants or natural light or color. And when I saw some of the examples of the bike spaces that you reference on the site, it really connected in that same way, which is trying to make the experience.
00:18:00
Speaker
it's often underestimated right but if you make the experience of pleasure and and visually dynamic it just makes the whole thing easier and more appealing and you can do the same with stairs and it sounds like you're doing it with these sort of cycling entrance and departure zones.
00:18:18
Speaker
You're absolutely right. Years gone by, it made sense to spend all this money on reception areas and have all these amazing artworks and think, God, isn't this great? So people going in thought, oh yeah, this is lovely.
00:18:34
Speaker
But then for years people you could have the, I don't know, it could be MD of Deutsche Bank who's in your building will actually cycle to work and they're literally parking their bike near the bin storage under the building. And it doesn't really make any sense because if you're a landlord of that building, you want to keep that bank there. And so you need your whole building to be a nice experience.
00:18:58
Speaker
However, I can guarantee 90% of buildings in London probably are very much still like that, despite how much effort's been made and how things are changing. So the whole building needs to be a good experience. And if it is, it's less likely tenants or residents are going to leave. And you might be able to charge them more.
00:19:19
Speaker
So the sort of financial side is always present, right? And I saw... Always, always. You know, nobody wants to spend much money on the stairwells, for example, nor on, I'd imagine, the basement bike facilities. But there's so much you can do with a lick of paint and some vinyls, right? It doesn't have to cost the world. You don't need original artworks. You can make it look kind of funky.
00:19:41
Speaker
You absolutely are and I think the example I think you're referring to on our website is the Castleme building in Bristol which I think you would have seen and that building which is 100 out of 100 scoring buildings which is amazing was actually built originally in the 1980s. So what's amazing is that a lot of the kind of traditional thinking is
00:20:05
Speaker
Well, I've got an old building there's not really any point making any effort because all these new builds can come along and just put bike racking in and make them look great. But in reality, that's not the case. The investment really isn't anywhere near as much as what I think a lot of developers or a lot of existing landlords are building to think it is.
00:20:26
Speaker
especially when you consider the benefit of it in terms of long-term to business case in terms of how to keeping people tenants happy or attracting tenants because you know there's a lot of movement as always in real estate of people coming and going and so it helps to kind of give yourself the very best chance if a building or a company taking space knows their employees are going to have a great experience when they get into work, parking a bike, having a shower, going for a run at lunchtime, whatever it may be.
Future of Active Travel Integration
00:20:56
Speaker
So it's an investment in a sense, right? Because it's not going to need to be changed that much, but you can also spread it out. You just put it in your capex budget, spread it out over, I don't know, five years before it needs another lick of paint, I guess. But if you look further down the line, if you kind of gaze into your crystal ball in terms of where active travel and therefore active score as a certification system is going to go over the next 10, 20 years, what are your predictions? Like, where is this all leading us?
00:21:26
Speaker
I think if it's been anything, if we can kind of or try very hard, which is not always difficult to forget about the pandemic, if we went up to the pandemic and what I've seen in terms of the increase in active travel in the
00:21:42
Speaker
12 or so years up until that point. I'd say most commercial buildings certainly and residential because of what was happening with planning anyway would look completely different. The facilities would be so much better just because of the way culture and people were naturally shifting across to active travel. As I said I think the pandemics maybe
00:22:08
Speaker
going to actually take somewhere along this line that's five years out of that in terms of it's going to make it happen so much quicker because we're seeing now the levels of people going into work by bike even though people have just started going back into London for example or Bristol or Manchester clients are getting inundated with cyclists in particular people wanting to use the active trail facilities so crystal ball wise I'd say
00:22:36
Speaker
It's going to be completely different, quantity-wise, I don't know. But I wouldn't go far to say you've got a building like 22 Bishopsgate being built in central London and they're having to put 1700 spaces in. Their square footage is around about 1.31 million, I believe. I might be wrong on that, but it's not far off. I would say that, if it's five years' time, they'll be asking for at least 2,500 bike racks. I can't see how they won't be. Possibly 3,000.
00:23:05
Speaker
So it kind of shows where we're going to go overall. You mentioned in a previous comment about the world building standard, which is one that you're particularly involved in, as I
Advising WELL and Design Consultancy
00:23:20
Speaker
understand. So what does your role look like there? How you're particularly focusing on the active travel, active transportation? Is that the gist of it?
00:23:28
Speaker
That's correct. In particular with well, it's more of a focus on the cycling side of things because that's what they tend to look at at the moment, mainly at. So I'm an advisor to them on the movement side of the well certification. So they certainly over the past five years
00:23:51
Speaker
taken more, I wouldn't say more of an interest. Interest is a wrong word, but they realize it's more important than it was before. So that's why they're great in that they always, any subjects, they've got so many advisors and they always try and cherry pick people who are seen as an expert in an area and to work with them to help them develop their standard out.
00:24:13
Speaker
So that's what I've done over the past few years. But they're a really good example of a certification and they're all doing the same. Presby are doing the same. Brienne are doing the same. LEED, which is obviously more popular in the States, are doing exactly the same as well. Well, it's a great seal of approval in a sense for you to be chosen, singled out for that. It really is. It's interesting, the model that you have, because you also
00:24:42
Speaker
Whereas perhaps some of the other certifications are pure certification businesses, although they may just have a separate business that then sells conveniently quality monitors or air purifiers or living wall systems or any other number of products. We're not mentioning any names though. Hey, listen, I'd do it. I'd for sure. But you kept it a little closer, right? Which is that you also offer some design consultancy
00:25:11
Speaker
services. Now, you know, I see it in the world of kind of how to integrate healthy design concepts into commercial buildings and, you know, an architect surely or an architect studio, even the biggest ones, they can't be experts in everything. So what gap are you filling there?
00:25:29
Speaker
You're absolutely right. Your last comment about can't be an expert and everything is really why Active Score exists. Because architects, I would say, collectively are extremely good at what they do. But there's no way they can have the knowledge that say we do on active trail facilities because we spend day in day out doing it. So there's just no way they can have the same knowledge. So what
00:25:56
Speaker
what kind of worked really well for us is ultimately we, when we started the certification, we realized that the certification was really going to work well because it enabled buildings to
00:26:13
Speaker
get educated, I guess, and work out how good their facilities are and allows buildings who've got good facilities to have a seal of approval and use it as a marketing tool. But also the certification allows buildings that maybe aren't so good at the moment and aren't scoring particularly well to go on a journey with us over a period of however many years to over time improve their facilities and subsequently improve their score.
Benchmarking and Marketing with Active Score
00:26:42
Speaker
However,
00:26:43
Speaker
We also realized that yes, there is a slight knowledge gap in terms of designing actual facilities. So that's why we wanted to have a design service alongside that. So if we have a client that's working on a new development or they want to undertake a refurbishment project potentially for an existing building, we can work with them to help them
00:27:07
Speaker
and their design teams to produce the very best facility possible with the space they have and the budget they have etc etc and then certify afterwards as well. So it's working extremely well and I'd say
00:27:22
Speaker
we tend to work, most of our clients on the design side, we're working with client architects rather than us doing the job of the architect, which yes we can do and we did do that for that building in Bristol, but most of the time we work alongside a client's existing architect to ensure the very best outcome for the active travel facility. Okay, so just to be 100% clear, the client, the developer then
00:27:48
Speaker
The developer would initially say, look, we're signing up for the certification, for example, one way in, and then we think the architects need a bit of extra help. Or is it architects who are saying, okay, this client's going for the certification?
00:28:01
Speaker
we have a knowledge gap and they come and seek you out or is it a bit of both? It's a little bit of both. I'd say it's probably weighted a little bit more to the client from the developer or the client will say, we'll turn around to their architect and say, have you heard this certification? We want this and we want to score the very best we can. And then the architect is more than happy to work with us and take our advice so that they can score the very best they can and achieve overall what it's all about the best outcome.
Scaling Active Score Services
00:28:32
Speaker
Very cool. And how do you price it? I mean, the certification system itself, how do you scale that? Yeah, so the certification, we think it's pretty good value. I mean, we see a yearly fee of £1,195 for the certification. And we have a two year license period. So a client would have to sign up for a minimum of two years. So it works out to be
00:28:56
Speaker
just under two and a half thousand pounds in total as a commitment and over that period we'll work with them to try and improve their facility and after the two years if they wish to renew it then that's what will happen and hopefully they'll score even better next time round.
00:29:14
Speaker
And the idea is it's almost like an insurance policy, I guess, for the client, so that while active travel is obviously taking off more so and increasing year-on-year, they don't get left behind. So that's the certification. And in terms of the design advice, where we work with an architect, we charge £3,000, and that includes the design advice, workshops with their architect, and a two-year certification period as well.
00:29:41
Speaker
And are you going down the path of trying to create a loose network of what in the industry is often referred to as APs, associated professionals or your kind of representatives in the field? You've been through some kind of an online training course.
00:29:55
Speaker
Exactly that. So we've literally launched it in the past month. We call it a little bit of a soft launch so far because it's new, it isn't finished, we're actually not charging for it because we want to just make sure the offering is as good as it can be. But ultimately we do see it being
00:30:16
Speaker
obviously useful for us in terms of being able to scale Active Score internationally, but also we think it would be an extremely useful tool for people who want to get more educated on the subject. So architects who are going to be working on the Active Trail facilities, project to project for example, I think this would be really, really useful for, because we'll take them through what makes a good facility and be able to keep them up to date with trends. So for example,
00:30:47
Speaker
e-bike charging racks are coming in, e-scooter charging racks are coming in, they're just two new things that architects currently will know very little about, or where to get them from, so we can help them with that. So yeah, the AP programme, we do think, although it's new, we do expect it to be very good for us. Nice, so people looking to learn a bit more, what's your main channel in terms of communication? Do you see more updates on the website? You're more on social, LinkedIn, that's what's your preferred route
00:31:16
Speaker
Sure. I mean, please, you can drop me an email directly at jamesatactivetravelscore.com or inquire through the website. I'm also on LinkedIn quite a lot and we've got a very, very active, active score LinkedIn page as well. So we tend to be very busy on there. It's our main way of letting the market know about us. So please feel free to reach out however you wish. Awesome. James, thanks for your time. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.