WfrF Complex sites speakers

Jessie is jointly responsible for the development and delivery of the festival. Her previous roles included working for a leading anti-slavery organisation, developing key stakeholder relationships and supporting organisational growth. Jessie is passionate about social justice and equality. Her work is motivated by her conviction of the value and dignity of every person. She is currently undertaking a MSt in Social Innovation at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Richard is residential sector expert with over 25 years’ experience having worked in the residential sector for both Consultancies and developer organisations.

Richard is the RLB Head of Affordable Housing and is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH). Richard is also a member of the Housing LIN South West Leadership Set involved in providing commentary on policy and strategy for older persons housing.

Richard has previously contributed to residential strategy documents produced for UK Central Government and has had articles published recently on modular housing delivery in conjunction with the Building Research Establishment and Bristol City Council.

Richard has extensive experience in the delivery of modular and Modern Methods of Construction residential projects.

Outside of the workplace Richard is a Trustee of an Almshouse organisation in Wells, Somerset comprising of a wide range of listed buildings providing older persons housing.

David started in the industry in 1982 when he was awarded an indentured apprenticeship with a local building contractor as a bricklayer. He then worked for Wilson Bowden developments as assistant site manager on a large scheme in Nottingham and was quickly promoted to site manager. He has a passion for complex engineering projects and has worked on complex large-scale projects ranging from £20m to £100m. His passion of quality delivery, efficient design and speed drove him to investigate different methods of construction and he spent some time in Vienna and Germany, where the simplicity and efficiency of manufacture made him realise how restricted the traditional methods of construction were. He has now joined Midgroup and is developing the South West region with varying types of MMC construction.

Gary Collins is a Chartered Town Planner with 30 years’ experience largely in Development Management. His career has mainly been in the West of England Sub Region, having worked at South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset Councils. For the past 15 years he has worked at Bristol City Council where he is Head of Development Management. During his time at Bristol, Gary has overseen the consideration of a wide range of development proposals including: new transport infrastructure, stadiums, arenas, and major mixed use redevelopment.

James is a specialist in planning and infrastructure matters. He has particular expertise in the housebuilder sector and has a successful track record of acting for national and regional housebuilders, registered providers and local authorities.

Trina cofounded Building Better with four housing association colleagues during the National Housing Federation's Greenhouse programme in 2018. Since then Building Better has grown to become an alliance of 29 social housing providers committed to delivering the highest quality housing through MMC with aggregation and collaboration at its heart.

Elevate was founded in 2021 in the belief that we need to build in a new way. Elevate’s aim is to demonstrate how we could ‘do things differently’ by tackling a series of challenges facing the built environment sector, including poor productivity, lack of technological adoption, workforce skills shortage, and of course, the climate emergency. ‍

After more than two decades experience specialising in sustainable construction and with a passion for all things innovative, Ele advocates that sustainable and holistic approaches to design, development, construction and manufacturing are the answer. Ele’s current clients allow her to work with a wide range of stakeholders to develop innovative solutions. This includes as part of the Market Development Team for industrialised retrofit at Energiesprong. As Strategy and Collaboration Manager for the Offsite Alliance, Ele supports the organisation to help the offsite sector collectively tackle barriers to adoption of offsite technologies.

During a previous role with a modular housing manufacturer, Ele worked alongside Bristol Housing Festival and the BRE in a consortium delivering the Enabling Housing Innovation for Inclusive Growth project, one of 3 Innovate UK ‘Transforming Construction Challenge’ projects Ele was involved in.