University of Birmingham partners with Innovation Gateway

The University of Birmingham has joined the Innovation Gateway, which is an alliance of organisations including Tesco and RBS who work together to reduce costs and environmental impacts of their buildings.

The university is particularly focused on developing a smart campus in Dubai. Construction is set to begin shortly on the UoB’s Dubai Campus, which is due to open to students in September 2021, and is part of the university’s £1bn capital campus transformation initiative. The partnership will also involve improvements to UoB’s existing Edgbaston Campus, including energy conservation.

See gallery below of Dubai campus designs by Hopkins Architects

The partnership with Innovation Gateway comes after the university’s 30-year plan from 1990-2020 to reduce its carbon footprint and become more sustainable. The University of Birmingham achieved the 2020 target to reduce legal carbon emissions by 20% five years early in 2014/2015.

UoB has also already introduced initiatives on existing campus assets and estates, including the installation of digital totems with a new digital campus map, improving wayfinding, navigation and information across the estate; and implementing Pavegen that generates renewable energy as users walk across its kinetic paving.

With this collaboration, has joined Tesco, Royal Bank of Scotland, Nottingham City Council and Heathrow Airport to find sustainable solutions through innovations in energy, waste, water, productivity, and wellbeing. So far, Innovation Gateway and its partners have sourced over 600 targeted innovations to address challenges. Since the partnership began:

• The companies involved have saved over 150,000 MWH energy
• Saved billions of litres of water
• Eradicated over 1.5m coffee cups per year
• Directly engaged with hundreds of thousands of employees to create healthy and sustainable workplaces

Trevor Payne, director of estates at the University of Birmingham, said: “We are focused on working with the other leading organisations to ensure that we identify and implement innovative and smart technologies into our new Dubai Campus.”

Henry Majed, partnerships director at Innovation Gateway, said: “I’m delighted that an organisation with University of Birmingham’s depth of experience has joined the partners in the Innovation Gateway, further strengthening the alliance. I’ve been hugely impressed by the University’s breakthrough ambition, and the progress it has made, with innovation-driven user experience at the heart. I’m excited to see this in action through the ground-breaking new Dubai Campus, and the new perspectives this will bring to the group.”