Lasting public value
A more sustainable built environment is the purpose of our work. We consider carbon, resilience, affordability, and wellbeing together, so better evidence can support decisions with lasting value.
Building Insights Together
Better places begin
with insight.
Discover what guides us
We connect research, local knowledge, and responsible technology to help people make better decisions about the places we share.
01 / Our purpose
A sustainable future.
Grounded in everyday places.
Buildings shape how we live, the resources we use, and the opportunities around us. Understanding those connections is the starting point for meaningful change.
From UN buildings reporting to locally designed city models, BIT connects climate and physical conditions with policy, local knowledge, and the needs of communities.
Why we do this02 / What guides us
Technology in service
of people and place.
How we work matters as much as what we build.
Our purpose and principlesRespect for place
A city is lived as well as measured. Its physical environment, social fabric, and policy context matter. Local knowledge helps us understand what the data alone cannot tell us.
Evidence you can examine
Understanding should stand up to scrutiny. We preserve sources and methods, make assumptions and limitations visible, and keep the path from evidence to insight traceable.
Progress together
Good decisions need different perspectives. Collaboration and informed human judgment guide our work. We share knowledge wherever possible and learn from the people applying it.
03 / International perspective
Global perspective.
Knowledge of place.
Our work connects the international buildings and climate community with the decisions that shape individual places.
Our international workUNEP / GlobalABC
Global assessment
Informing the
buildings agenda.
Building Insights researchers are among the lead coordinating authors of the 2025–2026 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction.
Explore the reportIEA EBC
Research leadership
Evidence that
travels further.
Ian Hamilton led Annex 70, an international research collaboration on real building energy use and its application to policy and practice.
Explore the researchWorldGBC / BPIE
International dialogue
Connecting knowledge
with action.
Building Insights co-hosted a London Climate Action Week 2026 reception with WorldGBC, BPIE, and GlobalABC.
See the programme04 / Where we contribute
Shared challenges.
Practical possibilities.
Our developing capabilities support the people shaping public services, improving buildings, understanding risk, and choosing where to live.
Explore our offerings
05 / Research standards
Research built to
stand up to scrutiny.
Reliable findings depend on methods that can be inspected, compared, and challenged by the people who know a place and a field best.
Provenance through the chain
We connect findings to their source materials, transformations, analytical decisions, limitations, and published outputs so the path from evidence to insight can be followed.
Methods with editions
Methods are editioned. Changes and their rationale are recorded, making it possible to compare approaches and understand how results evolve.
Challenge tested in rounds
We put methods through successive rounds of challenge with stakeholders and subject-matter experts, using their questions and feedback to refine the work.
Built around the relationships that make a place.
The Mariposa experiment
A small place.
A world of
possibility.
Grounded in Kitchener–Waterloo, Mariposa is where we test how a city can be understood on its own terms. It brings our principles into the practical work of developing a model around a particular place.
Meet MariposaKITCHENER–WATERLOO, CANADA
Building Insights Together