Areas of Expertise

1. Design and Architecture: Steve is able bring to the fore over thirty years’ experience as a chartered architect and is passionate about good design that responds well to the needs of people, environment and context.  He has a wide range of experience derived from several sectors, but has particular knowledge of the education, public and housing sectors.  More recent work has included commercial, industrial, transport and retail sectors.  Steve’s design process and practice outlook are characterised by attention to strategic thinking through to management implications and such that his input has often been sought by colleagues seeking both strategic design/management solutions and technical expertise.
2. Sustainable Communities and Inclusive Design: Steve is an experienced Consultant Member of the National Register of Access Consultants and former Director of “bud” (Building User Design Solutions Ltd) and prior to that Inclusive Design Manager to Stride Treglown, with a broad experience of inclusive design and sustainable communities gained from architecture, social services, social housing, Shelter, the Industrial Society, culturally diverse living and voluntary activities, leading to his input being sought within the RIBA, BSi and BRE. Steve now leads the Access and Inclusive Design Consultancy team at Atkins and is Atkins’s Technical Authority for Inclusive Design.
3. Design for the Mind and Wellbeing: Having worked with people with learning difficulties and other neuro-atypical experiences, Steve has fostered particular knowledge relating to identifying tangible relationships between people’s neuro-diverse experiences and the built environment.  Owing to the lack of guidance on this subject, especially within inclusive design/management guidance, Steve chaired the BSi’s neuro-diversity working group and occasional writes articles derived from this specialist knowledge.  He has now written a book called Designing Mind-Friendly Environments, information about which can be found under the menu item “Book.” One specific realm of this subject includes the social and sensory characteristics of an environment, and covers proxemics, acoustics, colour, lighting and patterns.
4. Wayfinding and Communication: Experience of other people’s neuro-atypical experiences and personal experience of dyslexia, has enabled Steve to develop a particular interest in communication design/management and wayfinding, to the extent that he has been asked to write a number of articles on this subject.  Steve has also undertaken unpublished research into this subject and has enabled a relationship to develop between the Makaton Charity and the BSi committee responsible for graphic symbols.  He also worked closely with Stride Treglown’s Graphic Designers and Brand Consultant in the furtherance of these subjects and has a close working relationship with Atkins Wayfinding team too.
5. Procurement, Brief Development and Stakeholder Engagement:  Much of Steve’s advice within the RIBA and BSi and to the BRE have related to improving procurement processes.  Many of the challenges associated with implementing social policies such as inclusion within the built environment, stem from a systemic lack of stakeholder engagement and brief development.  Although legislation, such as the Equality Act, require stakeholder engagement to take place under the Public Sector Equality Duty, common project procurement practices often fail to engage stakeholders  and to develop project briefs sufficiently to the extent that the impact on stakeholders and the implications for management are often insufficiently anticipated.  Steve’s work seeks to help clients as they seek to address this.