BS 8683 - Process for designing and implementing biodiversity net gain

Recorded: 8 June 2021 (14:00 – 15:30 UK time)

What’s this webinar about?

The loss of biodiversity as a result of human activity is having increasingly severe impacts. As a result, governments, businesses and organizations of all types are acting, not only to protect biodiversity, but to ensure it thrives.

Accordingly, this webinar launches BS 8683:2021 Process for designing and implementing Biodiversity Net Gain. Specification. This new British Standard builds on and adds to the UK’s Good Practice Principles of BNG. It translates those principles and actions into a specification, providing a consistent and structured process for designing and implementing BNG based on good practice. The webinar features the standard’s authors introducing this new specification.

Who is this webinar for?

This standard applies to any scale of project in any sector. The webinar  particularly interests:

• Procurement and contract specialists
• Project managers
• Project ecologists
• Local authority planners
• Quality managers
• EIA coordinators, environment and sustainability managers, landscape architects
• Land and estate managers and land agents
• Biodiversity offset brokers

What will you learn?

• The context behind the standard’s development
• What’s in the standard
• How it can be used in practice
• How it relates to government requirements

Agenda

14:00 - 14:05 Welcome and introduction - Lesley Wilson, Lead Standards Development Manager, British Standards Institution (BSI)

14:05 - 14:15 Why biodiversity net gain and why a process Standard - Dr Julia Baker, Biodiversity Technical Specialist, Balfour Beatty, Nick White, Principal Advisor - Net Gain, Natural England

14:15 - 14:30 Preparation for undertaking the process of BNG - Dr Julia Baker, Biodiversity Technical Specialist, Balfour Beatty, Bob Edmonds BSc MCIEEM CEnv, Technical Director and Ecology Team Manager, SLR Consulting Ltd, Jo Treweek, Managing Director, Treweek Environmental Consultants

14:30 - 14:35 Q&A session

14:35 - 14:55 BNG in design - Dr Julia Baker, Biodiversity Technical Specialist, Balfour Beatty, Bob Edmonds BSc MCIEEM CEnv, Technical Director and Ecology Team Manager, SLR Consulting Ltd, Jo Treweek, Managing Director, Treweek Environmental Consultants

14:55 - 15:00 Q&A session

15:00 - 15:10 Implementing, maintaining and managing BNG - Dr Julia Baker, Biodiversity Technical Specialist, Balfour Beatty, Gemma Jerome, Director, Building with Nature Ltd. and Fellow Landscape Institute, Landscape Institute

15:10 - 15:30 Q&A and panel discussion - Chaired by Dr Julia Baker, Biodiversity Technical Specialist, Balfour Beatty

15:30 Close of the event

For a first look at the new UK Biodiversity Net Gain standard from the experts who wrote it, watch the webinar now.

Lesley Wilson is a Lead Standards Development Manager at BSI, the UK’s National Standards Body. She has been delivering standards solutions for business in the field of environmental management for over 10 years, working with national and international experts to create good practice for a more sustainable and secure world.

Dr Julia Baker MCIEEM CEnv is a Biodiversity Technical Specialist at Balfour Beatty; one of the major infrastructure contractors in the UK. Julia has designed and delivered Biodiversity Net Gain for a variety of projects including large and small scale, rural and urban. Julia is the leading author of the UK’s Good Practice Principles on Biodiversity Net Gain and runs professional training on Biodiversity metrics. She is also a Visiting Researcher at the University of Oxford. 

Dr Gemma Jerome is a champion for the functions and benefits of green infrastructure across the built environment and nature conservation sectors.

As Director of Building with Nature, she oversees the UK’s first benchmark for green infrastructure, integrating holistic design thinking into planning and development through a new quality standard that ensures we build places that meet the needs of this and future generations. 

Gemma is a qualified environmental planner and through her doctoral studies she examined the role of stewardship in the longevity and resilience of community-scale green infrastructure, with a particular focus on reducing health and social inequalities.

Gemma chairs the British Standards Institute panel for the emergent Biodiversity Net Gain standard (BS8683) and sits on the advisory group for the Natural England GI Standards Project.

The Building with Nature benchmark won the 2018 RTPI Planning Excellence Awards ‘Sir Peter Hall Award for Wider Engagement’.

Gemma became a Fellow of the Landscape Institute in February 2021. In this role she will champion holistic, joined-up design thinking. Landscape professionals need to be at the heart of the development process if we hope to find solutions to the triple threat of the climate, ecological and health emergency.

Dr Nick White works across Government (national and local), and with developers, NGOs and academia to advance policy, practice and standards around net gain (biodiversity, natural capital and environmental). The current focus of his work is on biodiversity net gain legislation, the biodiversity metric and biodiversity net gain standards and guidance. He is also working on the evolving approach to marine net gain.

As a non-ecologist he is interested in how biodiversity and the natural environment can contribute towards wider social and economic benefits. He also has a strong interest in green infrastructure, especially in relation to urban areas and its ability to enhance wider (grey) infrastructure resilience.

He enjoys engaging with different sectors and seeking opportunities to help secure the delivery of shared outcomes. He has previously worked in the health, cultural and charitable sectors.

Bob Edmonds is a Technical Director and Ecology Team Manager at SLR Consulting Ltd.  Bob specialises in ecological impact assessment, habitat management planning, biodiversity net gain (BNG) and protected fauna survey and mitigation.

Bob has spent much of the last 10 years leading the development of guidance and good practice in the area of biodiversity net gain and ecological impact assessment.  He was a contributing author to CIRIA-CIEEM-IEMA Principles for BNG published in 2016 and is a committee member on British Standard BS8683 – Biodiversity Net Gain, where he is representing the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM). Bob has been a member of the Professional Standards Committee of CIEEM since 2014 and had an key role in preparing CIEEM’s 2019 EcIA Guidelines and 2017 Guidelines for Preliminary Ecological Appraisal. Bob is a Director of UKHab Ltd, the not-for-profit organisation established to maintain The UK Habitat Classification, which is the new unified classification that underpins the DEFRA BNG metric and many Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital assessment approaches.

Bob’s primary focus in consultancy is undertaking ecological assessment for development projects, including housing, energy, mineral extraction and infrastructure projects. He particularly enjoys working closely with other professionals to deliver biodiversity-led design and long-term ecological management plans to ensure sustainable gains for biodiversity.

Jo is director of TEC, an ecological consultancy based in the UK and carrying out work for clients in the UK and overseas. She specialises in ecological iimpact assessments, biodiversity due diligence for financial institutions and the design and implementation of biodiversity offsets. Jo is also a Director of the UK Habitat Classification.

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