The project involves partnerships with various organisations, including the CIBSE Heritage Group, Construction History Society, University of Kent, and Queens’ College Cambridge.
The main project partner is the House of Parliament. This partnership has been developed over the past four years in the context of earlier research conducted by Dr Schoenefeldt, which was funded through grants from the Faculty of Humanities and the Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Starting in November 2013 he has given several talks at Westminster and produced reports and briefing papers for the House of Commons Commission, Parliamentary Estate Directorate and Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme, providing an overview of the historic system and its performance.
Poster of joint evening talk on the restoration programme given by Andrew Piper, Lead Engineer, David Waterhouse, AECOM, and Dr Schoenefeldt at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, London, on 19 October 2015.
In October 2014 Dr Richard Ware, Director for the R&R programme, Andrew Piper, Lead Mechanical Engineer, agreed on a formal partnership. These acknowledged that the research provides critical insights into technical aspects of the Palace that is highly relevant to the current inquiries into the restoration. At key stages in this project, Dr Schoenefeldt is working with the Parliamentary authorities and those teams and individuals involved in the restoration programme. These ranged from the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme team itself to architects, engineers and other teams in the Parliamentary Estates Directorate.
The Construction History Society, Queens’ College, Cambridge, and the CIBSE Heritage Group are involved as partners of an international conference to be held in Cambridge in Spring 2018. This conference will look at the relationship environmental, structural and material innovation in 19th and 20th-century architecture.
To explore the wider application of the research methodology in building conservation Dr. Schoenefeldt will also be convening a Working Group. This is supported by the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE). Bringing together practitioners and professional bodies in the fields of building conservation, engineering and environmental design, the group will investigate how the integration of historical and technical research methods can provide practitioners with a better understanding of heritage building from an environmental perspective. The group will start its work in early 2017.
