Tina Paillet has ended her year as the 142nd President of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, passing the baton to Justin Sullivan, the founder and chief executive of construction consultancy business Adair, on 1 January.
CoStar News caught up with Paillet, the former UK and North America chief for Generali Real Estate, to discuss her highlights in a busy year and what she hopes her legacy will be.
"The real highlight has been seeing my work as president bear fruit in moving the needle on sustainability and developing out a whole end-to-end system for decarbonising the built environment," says Paillet. "The period saw us launch the circular do tank too and put RICS in a leadership position on the issue of the circular economy."
The "do tank" has been one of Paillet's pet projects – the creation of what she terms a core group of "doers" signing a pledge to reuse of materials on their development or fit-out projects and to share the outcomes and lessons learnt for the wider industry to build on.
"End-to-end decarbonisation is the way I set this out at the beginning of the year. The drive is to make our profession the trusted advisers on sustainability. To have confidence when developing sustainable buildings and cities you have to be able to measure improvement and that measurement needs to be standardised and benchmarkable."
Paillet says the RICS's whole-life carbon assessment standard is critical. The second edition came into full effect on 1 July and it seeks to measure whole-life carbon emissions, manage carbon budgets, reduce life cycle emissions and deliver a net-zero future for the built environment.
"Our whole-life system is a big piece of work. It is a framework to be used internationally accompanied with guides facilitating its adoption by governments across the globe."
Paillet describes it as a high-level framework, guiding professionals in how to measure and report carbon for the built environment.
"It is the linchpin of the RICS decarbonisation system, and it has been received really well. We bolted on to either side of the methodology a database to source inputs and report outputs of whole life carbon assessments. While there are a number of [Environmental Product] databases there was not a database that was fully interoperable with RICS methodology including standardised reporting formats which would allow for meaningful benchmarking. As part of an industry-wide coalition, we have been working over the last few years on the BECD or Built Environment Carbon Database. Once we have the inputs, then it is about calculating the whole-life carbon itself, and providing a software validation programme to make sure the online carbon calculators are carrying out their calculations in line with our whole life-carbon assessment methodology."
Paillet says RICS has started trialling the software validation programme with a few suppliers and will be rolling this out more widely in the New Year. "Ultimately the assessments are only as good as the professionals carrying them out and we have put in place a number of training modules, all the way up to an 80-hour programme to become an RICS-accredited carbon assessor."
Paillet says there are two cohorts going through the programme, and there has been huge interest in the training from across the world. There are now about 25 governments or organisations that have adopted the RICS whole life-carbon standard, across the world.
"We have some really important and high-level adoptions internationally. At COP 28 we met with the head of sustainability at Expo and after several months we have signed a high profile partnership with Expo City Dubai to roll out the whole life carbon assessment standard to professionals for using it in [the] UAE. There has been adoption by Transport for New South Wales in [Asia-Pacific], and with the Northern Ireland Strategic Investment Board. It is embedded with the Office for Government Place [now part of the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government].
"RICS has stepped into a leadership position. RICS is providing the tools to measure to a global standard, to create 'the [International Financial Reporting Standards]' for carbon accounting for the built environment."
Paillet's period in charge has undoubtedly been less fraught with controversy and member disaffection than recent predecessors.
In 2022, the institution began implementing the Bichard independent review into its purpose, governance and strategy. The independent review was published in June 2022 with 36 recommendations for its overhaul, citing an "urgent" and "unarguable" need for change. The institution had already committed to implementing the 18 recommendations of the Levitt inquiry into events that took place in 2018-19 following an audit of RICS's finances.
Paillet says during the year, in response, she has focused on "our four pillars of strategy".
"The first pillar is about enhancing membership engagement and I think we have turned a page here. We had a very successful [annual general meeting] this year and we have improved exchanging with our membership about what we have been doing. Following the AGM, we received very positive feedback about pride in the profession. People are proud to be a member of RICS and of its impact on the worldwide stage as well as in the UK and Ireland.
"We held Governing Council Elections this year too and we had a record number of extremely high-calibre candidates – 91. It was very competitive. There were also 23 applications for senior vice-president."
Paillet says in terms of trust in the profession there has been a change the relationship with the government.
"We strengthened the Standards and Regulations Board with a permanent chair and full permanent board in seat this year. We have also formed the Pilot Consumer Working Group in the year."
This is an advisory panel which will act in the interests of consumers to help shape the way RICS develops professional standards and approaches the regulation. Its formation is one of the final remaining recommendations from the Bichard review that was published in June 2022.
Paillet says RICS was present at all the party conferences in 2024, creating a rapport with government. "We have been meeting with [the Labour Party] to provide ideas around the 1.5 million homes it has targeted to develop. We have discussed deploying our residential retrofit standard and we have looked at supporting the skills gap in terms of the real estate sector."
One of Paillet and RICS's more headline-catching ideas is the creation of a GCSE qualification for the built environment to attract a diverse next generation.
"At present, this is not a sector that most parents and students are aware of and so they do not envisage coming into it. The idea of a GCSE for the built environment could change perceptions and encourage the next generation into the sector. This idea is gaining traction with government as we have had discussions at Cabinet level and initial meetings with MPs. This will be picked up by my successor, Justin Sullivan, who is very interested in resolving the skills gap issue."
In terms of reforms to the valuations industry, after RICS's independent review of real estate investment valuations, overseen by then-Wellcome Trust chief executive Peter Pereira Gray, Paillet says the RICS has responded positively.
His 13 recommendations published in 2022 called for more oversight over and stricter rules governing property valuations. They represent the biggest change to the property valuation industry in a generation.
Paillet highlights the move towards using the discounted cashflow model more.
"What happened yesterday does not necessarily prepare you for what happens tomorrow, especially in a world of constant change. DCF provides the opportunity to include the impact of foreseeable change in future income streams and allows valuers to add in capex spend for things like regulations on climate."
Paillet returns to the "circular do-tank", to underline what she is most proud of. "It is all about bringing major players in the built environment together and sharing lessons learned to change how the sector looks at building waste.
"Only 1% globally of materials in standard demolition are reused and our sector represents 32% of landfill materials in UK. At the same time we are using over 50% of primary materials and resources. That is carbon-intensive and depleting our resources and we are living on borrowed time. We launched the do-tank in September and in January will go out and really drive to get signees to pledge and then support them to deliver reuse. We will move that 1% way up the scale. There is no reason that will not be successful."