S5E05: Protecting heritage, powering renewal

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges of protecting heritage while modernizing historic buildings through collaboration.

Welcome to season 5 of AECOM’s Talking Infrastructure podcast. Talking Infrastructure delves into the industry’s hot topics, key projects, and the ground-breaking innovations that are helping to solve some of the world’s most complex infrastructure challenges. Protecting heritage, powering renewal Protecting heritage while powering renewal is a challenge facing communities and organisations across the UK. As historic buildings and places are adapted to meet modern needs, the question is how to preserve what makes them special while ensuring they remain relevant for future generations. Collaboration is increasingly at the heart of that challenge. By bringing together different organisations, skills and expertise, it is possible to develop practical and affordable solutions that protect heritage, preserve traditional craftsmanship and support modern requirements. How can historic buildings be modernised without losing their character and significance? What does effective collaboration look like in complex, live environments? And how can heritage assets help strengthen local identity while enabling places to respond to social and environmental change? In this special panel…

People in this episode

Host: Toby Sadler

Guests: Sophia Negus, Alasdair Travers, Christine Davis-Worth, Richard Jessup

Topics covered

• heritage preservation
• modernization of historic buildings
• collaboration in infrastructure
• community identity
• sustainable development

Keywords

• heritage
• renewal
• historic buildings
• collaboration
• local identity
• sustainability
• infrastructure

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AECOM, Purcell, BDP

Places: UK

More episodes of Talking Infrastructure

• S5E04: Northern Powerhouse Rail: the choices that will shape delivery · May 21, 2026 · 39 min
• S5E03: Then, now, next: lessons in building lasting communities · May 21, 2026 · 44 min
• S5E02: Private finance as a catalyst for infrastructure growth: the airport advantage · April 14, 2026 · 48 min
• S5E01: The resilience test: is our infrastructure climate-ready? · March 17, 2026 · 41 min
• S4E03 :Future-ready infrastructure: Addressing the STEM skills crisis · July 25, 2025 · 38 min
• S4E02: Could nature help solve the UK’s sewer overflow challenge? · February 27, 2025 · 37 min