The GRC Team
John Newton
John Is Managing Director of Ecology Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ecologyconsultancy.co.uk/ with over 30 years experience of working on ecological issues including as an in-house environmental manager for a property development company and with construction contractors.
He also has extensive experience of both the public and voluntary conservation sectors and was previously deputy director of London Wildlife Trust. John co-authored CIRIA’s Building Greener guidance http://www.ciria.com/buildinggreener/index.html
Dusty Gedge
has worked in green roofs for over 12 years. He is currently the President of the European Federation of Green Roof Associations.http://www.efb-greenroof.eu/start_englisch.html
He founded Livingroofs.org in 2004 to provide the first independent green roof organization in the UK. Livingroofs.org provides advice, information and advocacy for the green roof industry in the UK. www.livingroofs.org
He is one of the people who coined the term brown roof to ensure that green roofs were considered as ecological habitats/landscapes and not merely a form of ‘green’ cladding. He has written a number of leading articles on green roofs and is recognized speaker at conferences and seminars throughout the world from South Korea to USA.
With John Little of www.grassroofcompany.co.uk he has written an eBook on small scale green roof construction
http://www.livingroofs.org/diy-guide-green-roofs.html
Gary Grant
Gary has been designing green roofs for nearly 20 years. One of his first projects was working with the green architects Architype on the Horniman Museum Extension green roof. In 2003 he co-authored English Nature Research Report No 498 on Green Roofs and is author of Green Roofs and Facades published by BREPress in 2006.
Until recently he was a Director with AECOM where he was co-author of the Green Roof Guidance for Greater Manchester and designed the Westfield Living Wall in West London, the largest living wall in the UK.
Dr. Gyongyver Kadas
Gyongyver is a zoologist specialising in the invertebrates of green roofs. She completed a Phd at Royal Holloway Unviversity of London in 2007 having monitored a series of green roofs in London for 4 years.
She is undertaking monitoring for the GRC as part of the Buglife Sita Nature Enhanced Living roof project, which installed a series of biodiverse green roofs throughout London in 2009. Gyongyver has co-authored peer reviewed articles on green roofs and biodiversity
www.iob.org/userfiles/File/biologist_archive/Biol_52_3_Kadas.pdf
http://www.urbanhabitats.org/v04n01/invertebrates_full.html
Ben Kimpton
Ben is a Senior Ecologist at The Ecology Consultancy specialising in botany. He has over ten years experience of working with UK plants and habitats, alongside both academic and professional experience in garden design and landscape horticulture, including The Eden Project.
Ben frequently uses Building Environmental Assessment Tools, such as BREEAMs and the new Code for Sustainable Homes and understands firsthand the contribution green roofs make to these ratings.
He has a special interest in vegetating green roofs in a way that is sympathetic with the bioregion and Biodiversity Action Plans. He is also an active member of Building Green, a voluntary forum aimed to promote the use of plants on roofs and walls in Brighton & Hove.