Oliver Novakovic

Oliver has worked on innovation in the construction sector with clients such as Audi, M&S, Sainsbury, British Gas and BASF for over 20 years. He has covered product development, application through to cultural change management. His career started through patenting a foam injected whole house solution as a young engineer, which he then sold to Westbury Homes PLC and became the Space4 system which delivers circa 5000 units into the Persimmon business.

Whilst at Westbury he got involved closely with integrating this new technology into their core business which allowed him to learn how the private housing sector works. He then went to work for BRE ending up a Board Director in charge of Building Futures a group of over 70 specialists in sustainability, energy, lean processes, innovation and data collection for both the domestic and non-domestic sectors. He worked with and led teams in developing a number of offsite factories for both domestic and non-domestic sectors in the UK and Europe. Has also been a technical / innovation / sustainability advisor on a number of Government programs and projects around offsite, refurbishment and new build including Design for Manufacture and Zero Carbon Challenge.

Oliver specific experiences in Zero Carbon include;

1. Developed and project managed the delivery of the BRE Innovation Park which delivered a number of zero carbon, Passiv Haus and Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 & 5.
2. Led the partnership between Passiv Haus and BRE to introduce Passiv Haus to the UK.
3. Worked closely with the Zero Carbon Hub and was an integral part of their delivery.
4. Developed and won a flagship £6m R&D project, AIMC4, to deliver cost efficient low carbon solutions in mass.
5. Supported Blue Chip organisations including Audi, Dupont. M&S, Tesco, etc to develop their Sustainability and low Carbon Strategy.

With Barratt his current role is to assess and roll out innovation across the business under their leading construction principle, this includes integrating offsite methods of construction and zero Carbon. In his current role he has led a team that have assessed many of the different zero carbon systems and introduced a New Production Introduction process to Barratt. Oliver has been advising Central Government and HBF on how to develop a successful roadmap to deliver zero carbon solutions.