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Keynote speakers focus on wellbeing and environment at BIM Show Live

Designing for healthy people and places, protecting the environment and human centred design are all high on the agenda at the BIM Show Live conference taking place in Newcastle upon Tyne on 26-27 February 2020.

Three of the four keynote speakers who will be headlining the two day event have been announced: biophilic designer and architect, Oliver Heath; Radio 4 presenter and TED X speaker, Timandra Harkness; and American BIM expert Chris Tisdel. The fourth keynote speaker is to be revealed in the coming month.

BIM Show Live attracts up to 400 delegates to Newcastle every year. Attendees benefit from four keynote speeches and more than 30 seminar sessions discussing the latest trends, innovations and new projects in BIM and digital design.

Oliver Heath is an industry recognised expert and thought leader in biophilic design, sustainable architecture and interior design, who works to create human-centred spaces that are shown to benefit the health and wellbeing of occupants.

With a background in architecture, Heath has spent 20 years working for the likes of BBC, ITV and Channel 4 promoting sustainability and wellbeing. His design practice now researches and develops how health and wellbeing can be integrated into the built environment and is the lead designer on a ground-breaking project for the Building Research Establishment: The Biophilic Office project.

Over the past five years he has presented more than 300 wellbeing CPDs to architects and interior designers and has acted as spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, The Energy Saving Trust and the Waste Recycling Action Group.

Timandra Harkness is a writer, speaker and comedian who presents BBC Radio 4’s series, FutureProofing. Her book, Big Data: Does Size Matter? was published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2016 and in 2017 she gave a TEDX talk titled What Is Knowledge In The Age Of Big Data?

Keynote speakers (l-r): Timandra Harkness, Oliver Heath and Chris Tisdel

Harkness speaks with authority, intellectual rigour and humour to audiences about the future, Big Data, AI and robots, and other topics relating science and technology to the wider questions of human life.

She is a visiting fellow (Knowledge Exchange) in Big Data, Information Rights and Public Engagement with the Centre for Information Rights at the University of Winchester, a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and a member of their working group on data ethics.

Chris Tisdel is the  founder of Ruckus Innovation Consulting in the US and has 25-plus years of global experience as a designer, catalyst for innovation, strategic consultant, founder and angel investor in design, engineering, and technology industries.

He started his career as an architect and became one of the early adopters (circa 1999) of BIM in Austin, Texas, later becoming the director of Building Information Modelling for the state of Texas. 

Tisdel has facilitated more than 100 workshops, guiding multiple organisations through their innovation journeys. He developed an integrated and highly adaptable innovation programme methodology known as the “Strategitorium”, which puts people and their ideas first.

On top of the keynote speeches, BIM Show Live 2020 delegates will benefit from more than 30 seminar sessions delivered by industry peers including Mikael Santrolli, BIM and design systems coordinator at Foster + Partners; John Ford, BIM and digital delivery lead at Galliford Try; and Hadeel Safaa Saadoon, BIM manager at Coventry University – a previous winner of the Rising Star Award at the BIM Awards who will this year be speaking on the main stage.

Details of the BIM Show Live 2020 programme and the speakers can be found at: www.bimshowlive.co.uk

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