Corporation Green is the brainchild of Clare Howe. Though her love of animals and the natural world developed very early, Clare’s deeper appreciation of the environment began in 1992 with the visit to her school of a group involved in the Rio Earth Summit. That international gathering, unprecedented at the time in the scope of its concerns, was to set a path for Clare’s life. The visitors outlined for pupils what were then, publicly at least, relatively unregarded problems like deforestation and climate change, and they suggested ways to conserve energy and try to ensure a sustainable future. To Clare, their message was compelling – in its simplicity and its urgency. Later, contemplating her own future beyond school, she saw a career in construction as a chance for practical involvement in building the sustainable environment to which her idealism had drawn her.

Clare joined construction company, Willmott Dixon in 1997. Her roles within the firm changed and expanded as she gained experience and qualifications: an HNC in Building Studies, a degree in Construction Management and a Diploma in Environmental Management, accredited by the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, of which Clare is a Full member and on whose Midlands Regional Steering Group she sits. In 2003, promoted to the role of Environmental Manager for the region, she became the main contact between the company and the Building Research Establishment office. She qualified as a BREEAM assessor for Schools and Offices in 2005. Clare was now not only ensuring that the Company’s sustainability objectives were being met on a wide range of projects but helping to define and plan for those objectives herself. Her role as a catalyst and coordinator of the company’s sustainability initiatives was connecting her to a wider network of people and she was able to use and develop the skills she had acquired some years before when qualifying as an Ambassador for the Construction Industry Training Board.

Setting up Corporation Green was the next logical step in Clare’s professional career and she has brought to her company further expertise and qualifications. Her assessment license now also covers EcoHomes, Bespoke and BREEAM Industrial and will soon include Retail, thus completing the range. She has joined the Forum for the Built Environment and is an active member of its sub-group ‘Forum for Tomorrow’. Clare has achieved the accolade of ‘Chartered Environmentalist’ with the Society for the Environment. Her committee work and CITB Ambassadorial role now connect her to an even wider network of people and range of projects. But her core belief in the practical achievability of building with the future in mind remains the same. ‘Every aspect of resource use should be thought through,’ she says. ‘Even if we don’t have all the answers today, we can be mindful of tomorrow.’ Her theoretical knowledge and practical experience in construction enable Corporation Green to advise at all levels and stages of the construction process, from design through to building management. Clare is confident that the company will continue to work for its clients and that it can disseminate widely the message of sustainability: to builders and developers and to a public whose expectations of the built environment are being positively influenced by each effective sustainable building they enter and use.

The adult Clare is still absorbed by animals and the natural world – last year, for example, she was in Costa Rica helping to conserve the local turtle population. And she also still remembers how, back in 1992 those visitors to her school had asked the children to pledge an action to help the environment, to write it down and pin it leaf-like to a tree. The work of Corporation Green is, years on, Clare’s pledge writ large: a growing professional commitment to a sustainable future.