Willmott Dixon recognised for contribution to reducing environmental impact

HM The Queen’s representative for Hertfordshire visited the company’s Letchworth Garden City head office to present a second Queen’s Award for Enterprise for sustainable development to Willmott Dixon in recognition of how they are reducing the environmental impact of their own activities and those in their supply chain. These series of sustainable achievements include reducing carbon emissions to turnover by 59% since 2010; cutting construction waste intensity by 57% since  2012 and being carbon neutral for the 6th year running. 

The company has a long track-record for environmentally friendly, low-energy buildings. Following completion of the Passivhaus certified George Davies Centre for the University of Leicester, Willmott Dixon applied this expertise to build Harris Academy in Sutton – the first secondary school in the UK to be built to Passivhaus standards, achieving 0.30 air changes per hour within a building of over 10,000 square metres. 

This latest recognition by the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise follows a first award in 2014 for sustainable development, and then in 2018 the company won an accolade for Promoting Opportunity. To mark the Queen’s Awards hat trick, the Lord-Lieutenant of Hertfordshire presented a scroll to Willmott Dixon chief executive Rick Willmott with a message from HM The Queen. 

Group chief executive Rick Willmott said, “This week’s UN Climate Action Summit was a timely reminder of the urgent action needed to tackle the affects we are seeing of global warming. The last four years were the four hottest on record, and the impacts of climate change are being felt everywhere with real consequences on people’s lives. Today’s presentation of our third Queen’s Award for Enterprise will act as a further catalyst for how we set ourselves even more challenging science-based carbon targets, which will place us on a trajectory to be a zero emissions – or even carbon positive – business by 2050.”