Interview: your involvement with GI - Nicholas Wright

What is your name?

Nicholas Wright

Job title?

National Project Manager - WMS

What is your involvement with GI at Polypipe?

I get involved with the greening of roofs and podiums, and increasingly watering soft landscape through passive irrigation, or water reuse via above ground tanks linked to podium/roof attenuation systems.

Tell us more about GI and what it means to you?

Being born and bred in Sheffield, with the city centre and the Peak District equal distance from my front door, it wasn’t until I travelled around the country I appreciated the parks of trees and green spaces Sheffield provides, and what that adds to the communities’ quality of life. If you look over the city in summer (which isn’t difficult due to the city being built on seven hills), it looks like Sheffield is built in a forest. Being part of bringing green spaces to places where you’d least expect it, and improving spaces that already exist is what GI means to me.

What does GI mean to Polypipe?

To Polypipe it demonstrates one of our core values in bringing value from concept through to the end user, via our products and services. We pride ourselves as a business in brining value from concept to delivery on projects, and this is even more important when considering GI as there are so many stakeholders involved. It will also require a great deal of learning as a business as this area develops and we become part of a wider conversation on projects. Design, delivery, sustainability, installation and maintenance of any product will be key when discussing GI, and to be one of the fore runners will require continued investment in people, ideas and products.

What does GI mean to our customers?

It’s an opportunity to create spaces to inspire, enjoy, and add value from a design and commercial point of view, and hopefully deliver projects that bring multiple benefits to the end user. As developers also try to meet the tougher guidelines on managing stormwater on construction sites, and create great spaces for people to live and play, GI offers the opportunity to do both. Most importantly looking at sustainability and the impact the design has on the environment from delivery to site, to the end of its usable life.

What can people expect to see more of after our launch of GI

Further innovation from Polypipe as ideas on how to implement GI become more creative. We will have to innovate and develop new products and ideas which is fundamentally what drives our business. Also, we’ll continue to look at how new and existing products in our range can be linked together, to further offer our customers products that are well designed and well made, whilst offering efficiencies on site and products that work.

Which do you feel is the most important multi-functional benefit?

Creating spaces where people can work, relax, and play in places where you’d least expect. As designs become more ambitious and demand new ways of thinking to achieve them, we can create a mini Yorkshire forest in places that were once just grey, or create spaces that connect people with nature and technology at the same. As a lot of people work on the move or are stuck in an office, creating multifunctional roof spaces in a space that typically was a means to an end is also a great feature.