Building Performance Engineer of the Year
Recognising and rewarding the contributions of practising building services engineers to creating and maintaining a sustainable built environment, and celebrating individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to building services engineering in 2017-19.
Winner: Aleksandra Sasha Krstanovic, Founder, mstep
‘Sasha wants her legacy to be for the generations coming after – what a great ambition.’
Sasha Krstanovic has been named Building Performance Engineer of the Year after impressing the judges with her enthusiasm for inspiring the next generation of engineers to take an active role in building performance.
The judges described her proactive approach to informal post-occupancy evaluation (POE) as unique, allowing her to discover and ameliorate issues, particularly in innovative systems. They felt Sasha’s passion for the role of engineers in mitigating climate change makes her a great ambassador for CIBSE, able to communicate current and future issues facing our sector.
‘Sasha’s view that the challenges we face as an industry must be tackled, not only with our skills, but with a completely different mindset change, is very refreshing and inspiring,’ the judges said.
In an industry with few female role models in leadership positions, Sasha has broken the mould – a director, chartered engineer and Fellow of CIBSE. .
As an experienced designer, she challenges the norm, and has delivered exemplar low energy/carbon projects, including:
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University of Nottingham, Energy Technology Building – world’s first zero-carbon laboratory
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The Apex, Bury St Edmunds – a music auditorium heated and cooled by an underground lake
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The Turnmill – London’s first speculative commercial office to rely solely on ground source heat pumps for heating and cooling.
Sasha recently started her own MEP/environmental engineering consultancy mstep.
With AECOM she recently helped transform the UN’s headquarters in Geneva, introducing smart working while using circular economy principles to bring this historic building into the 21st century.
To produce better multidisciplinary design, Sasha created the Better Buildings group at AECOM, which has led to new design standards to include sustainability and building performance checks in reviews at each stage of a project.
She also tutors at Nottingham University School of Architecture and on the Loughborough University Intelligent Buildings Course, giving monthly talks and workshops for architects, engineers and clients on practical application of low energy/low carbon solutions.
As a CIBSE volunteer mentor, Sasha helps women at the mid-stage of their career and where mentoring is not available internally. She also guides engineers towards chartership.
The nominees in this category were outstanding, the judges said, and inspired them to consider how critical the building services engineer’s role is to achieving our ambitions for safe, net zero buildings.
Shortlist
David Kingstone, Associate Director – BuroHappold