Inspiring a strong, sustainable and smarter built environment.
Are you on a mission to unlock the benefits of innovation and zero carbon construction?
We understand the challenge of transitioning to a zero carbon built environment and construction sector – and we’re here to help.
Accelerate to Zero
We face both a climate and a housing crisis.
By 2045 we need to decarbonise our entire built world. And we need to ensure citizens have quality, comfortable and healthy homes. To enable this and accelerate to zero carbon, we focus on:
Retrofit & energy efficiency
Housing & manufacturing
Skills & training
How we can help you.
With 10 years of experience, we know the challenges different ecosystems face in innovating, adapting to, and seizing the opportunity of a rapidly changing landscape.
BE-ST brings clarity, capability, and connections to inspire new ideas, generate growth and benefit businesses, education and communities.
We work with decision-makers, leaders, and changemakers across education, research, industry, SMEs, and the public and third sectors to unlock new value, inspire impactful change, and accelerate solutions for zero carbon construction.
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Access training, expertise, and resources to align curricula and research with industry needs.
Connect with industry to deliver research and course content which solves real-world challenges and meets workforce needs.
Keep up with the pace of change and adapt to shifting policies, market demands, and skills requirements with BE-ST’s guidance and resources.
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BE-ST advocates for citizens by championing the increased quality and energy efficiency of buildings and homes to create a better built world without fuel poverty and the negative health and wellbeing outcomes that poor housing can cause. We also advocate for people to join the construction sector as an exciting and promising career.
BE-ST does not work directly with citizens, but we can point you in the direction of organisations who can help:
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Access expertise, support, and resources to upskill your workforce and inspire innovation for low carbon construction.
Build connections and collaborative platforms to unite and transform fragmented industry practices into win/win collaborations.
Be in the know of changes to policy, market demands, and expectations to adapt quickly and build business resilience.
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Start your decarbonisation journey with our expert advice, networking, and access to innovative ideas.
Connect with the construction sector to build partnerships and deliver solutions that align with your goals.
Keep up with the pace of change of policy, market demands, and skills requirements to ensure your building stock is ready for net zero.
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Discover opportunities for resilience in low carbon construction with access to insights, tools, training, funding, and practical solutions.
Collaborate for success with our ecosystem of partners, policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders to deliver impactful projects.
Upskill and innovate with hands-on training and resources to stay ahead of shifting building standards, market demands, and skills requirements.
The BE-ST Campus
Where you can learn, experiment, and put smarter, more sustainable methods into practice.
Our Innovation Campus is home to two physical centres which are accelerating the sector’s key economic and sustainable opportunities. They are assets that exist to help the whole sector thrive.
Scotland’s National Retrofit Centre
Now retrofit to EnerPhit standard with £2 million investment, Scotland’s National Retrofit Centre exists to support the sector in delivering retrofit more affordably, at pace, and to a higher standard
It’s also home to Retrofit Scotland and our airtightness and Passivhaus training.
Mass Timber Centre of Excellence
A centre of excellence for mass timber innovation, manufacturing and skills, launched to transform how we deliver the built environment and increase the use of mass timber in construction through available to hire equipment and facilities through knowledge sharing, research and skills training.
BE-ST provides support for the industry to integrate timber into projects through access to the UK’s largest mass timber manufacturing facility allowing organisations to build quicker, more innovatively and more effectively.
The latest
Explore our upcoming news, events, training, and case studies.
The purpose of this survey is to understand current levels of knowledge, specification practices, and use of timber in the UK, with a particular focus on C16 and UK‑grown material.
New programme will help prepare the construction sector for proposed changes aimed at improving quality, compliance and public confidence.
A pioneering research initiative has demonstrated that England’s underutilised deciduous broadleaf forests could play a transformative role in delivering low-carbon buildings, supporting biodiversity, and strengthening domestic supply chains.
Architecture and Design Scotland outlines business plan, announces strategic partnerships and previews pop-up exhibitions space.
The Accelerate to Zero Awards are back for their fourth year to recognise the businesses, organisations, and individuals making the most significant contributions to decarbonising the built environment and supporting the just transition to a zero carbon built environment.
For the past five years, industry leaders, policymakers, innovators and practitioners have travelled to Glasgow for BE-ST Fest. In 2026, the festival evolves into a new regional format with four individual full-day summits taking place across Scotland, creating more opportunities for local collaboration, discussion and action.
A major new industry training programme designed to accelerate the use of timber in construction across the UK has officially launched at Futurebuild 2026, backed by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).
BE-ST and Carbon Futures have announced a new strategic partnership designed to combine their respective strengths and deliver greater impact on their shared mission to accelerate the decarbonisation of the built environment.
In support of a major new initiative, the Timber in Construction Skills Programme, a new series of webinars has been launched to equip the industry with essential skills – Timber in Construction 101 – completely free for anyone interested in using timber.
Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST), Scotland’s innovation centre for construction and the built environment, has delivered a three-day programme of activities as part of and alongside Futurebuild and UK Construction Week 2026 in London.
The paper, Delivering Quality, stems from a joint collaboration between Passivhaus Trust (PHT) and BE-ST and has been developed by Tier 1 contractors (T1C) and key stakeholders.
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) play a vital role in managing surface water and reducing flood risk. Over time, however, metals and other contaminants can build up in SuDS soils, potentially affecting how well they perform and shortening their lifespan.
A new report published today sets out how Scotland can strengthen the flow of new entrants into the construction and built environment workforce, helping ensure the sector has the people and skills needed to deliver against the country’s future ambitions.
Scotland’s housing emergency is often discussed in terms of ambition or funding. Yet as efforts to increase supply gather pace, the real challenge is often delivery: planning and regulation, cost certainty and a fragmented system where projects rarely build on one another.
To mark Scottish Apprenticeship Week 2026, BE-ST has delivered an intensive programme of specialist training to more than 140 apprentices and pre-apprentices this week in Glasgow and Dumfries & Galloway to build the skills needed for Scotland’s low carbon future.
A major disruptor in the UK construction sector, based in the South of Scotland, is benefitting from a £330,000 grant to propel its pioneering recycled‑glass building technology.
The Scottish Government has announced More Homes Scotland, a new housing agency. This is an exciting announcement and a significant step forward for creating the mechanisms we need to overcome Scotland’s housing emergency which was declared in May 2024.
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has awarded £430k from its flagship Industry Impact Fund to develop a comprehensive industry training programme to accelerate timber construction in the UK.
ASBP and BE-ST announce strategic partnership to drive sustainable transformation in the built environment across the UK.
Thames Freeport launches Sustainable Construction Lab as first retrofit works begin on the Becontree Estate.
The UK’s leading and largest construction show is back at Olympia London on November 19th and 20th, and it’s breaking all records!
Last night BE-ST (Built Environment – Smarter Transformation) celebrated the Accelerate to Zero Awards with over 200 stakeholders from across the built environment and construction sectors.
BE-ST has been appointed by Scottish Enterprise to undertake work which develops its role as a Cluster Management Organisation for the built environment. BE-ST will map current cluster activity, foster cross cluster collaboration, identify opportunities for economic growth, and unlock the full potential of Scotland’s innovation landscape.
BE-ST has welcomed eight key figures in the built environment and construction sectors onto its board. The new members bring experiences from industry and beyond, as well as expertise from retrofit, sustainability, property, energy, digital, innovation, and infrastructure.
BE-ST is proud to have collaborated with Bauer Media Outdoor and partners on the launch of the Milestone range of bus shelters in Basildon, Essex, marking the most significant innovation in UK bus shelter design in decades.
London Build 2025 returns to Olympia’s Grand and National Halls on November 19th and 20th to celebrate 10 years of connecting the construction industry. To mark the milestone, this year’s event will offer more networking, innovation and community building than ever before.
Gayatri Vijay Kale was awarded the BE Changemaker Award at the Accelerate to Zero Awards 2025.
Based in the Scottish Borders, IndiNature is the UK's only dedicated manufacturer of natural fibre insulation made from industrial hemp. Their products, IndiTherm and IndiBreathe Flex, are carbon-negative, non-toxic, and designed to be removed, reused, or returned for recycling at the end of their service life.
Changeworks is a Scottish social enterprise on a mission to decarbonise 180,000 homes by 2030. Their work sits at the intersection of climate action and social justice, and their approach to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) reflects that same dual commitment.
Matthew Clubb is an Aberdeen-based director of mwclubb, a practice specialising in low-energy architecture and the retrofit of existing buildings. A former oil and gas engineer, Clubb transitioned into architecture after a personal journey into climate science that left him shocked by the severity of the climate crisis.
The first example of curved Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) made from English timber demonstrates the benefits of building from UK-sourced wood to over 3.1m visitors per year.
For the past four years, BE-ST has acted as an industry mentor through the Engineering Development Trust’s (EDT) Industrial Cadets programme, working closely with pupils from Woodfarm High School on STEM-related industrial challenges.
Energy Saving Trust runs the Green Heat Installer Engagement Programme, which provides support for businesses in Scotland to help them to participate fully and effectively in the supply chain for clean heat, energy efficiency and microgeneration installations.
Hub West Scotland is a private sector development company who work in partnership with the public sector in the West of Scotland. They were interested, not only in understanding how best to develop these strategies across large, varied estates, but also how local authorities and other public bodies could benefit from working collaboratively to tackle this challenge, and so created the Net Zero Collaboration Group.
The first phase of work in the retrofit of Scotland’s National Retrofit Centre (SNRC) is now complete. But what has the project taught us, and what’s next?
Winners of the 2024 Accelerate to Zero Diversity and Inclusion Award, Threesixty Architecture have been recognised for embedding equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across every level of their business, from internal culture to industry influence.
The Torry Heat Network in Aberdeen is a landmark project that demonstrates how retrofit heat networks can deliver both climate and social impact.
The Edinburgh Home Demonstrator – a new business model for affordable homes built to net zero standards using offsite construction.
Get to know Sisaltech, a small but growing company passionate about creating a low-carbon future by producing sustainable building insulation made from sisal and wool.
CLIMAVORE CIC is on a mission to develop sustainable ways of living on and with the coast in response to the climate crisis.
Eriskay Historical Society, a community-led group that is committed to preserving Eriskay's heritage. The group is transforming the island's old schoolhouse into a local heritage museum while putting sustainability, and people, at the heart of the development. The initiative is a shining example of the Just Transition in action.
VASO Build Limited provide ecological services across sectors with the intent of bringing wider benefits to society. They are looking to realise these benefits through Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and a new sustainable panelling system.
Meet Brewster Brothers, a company shifting the way the construction and demolition industry in Scotland treats waste and consumes natural resources.
T1C collaborators Morrison Construction, Kier Construction, Balfour Beatty, Robertsons and Morgan Sindall, their supply chains and BE-ST, has built a box in BE-ST’s factory, aptly called the Tardis as there is more to it than meets the eye.
Social Bite, a charity and social business that aims to end homelessness, commissioned Ecosystems Technologies to deliver a new kind of housing for their Social Bite Village.
Chloë Yuill, a newly qualified Architect at ECD Architects, was the winner of the 2023 Change Maker Award at the Accelerate to Zero Awards for her significant commitment and contribution to solving the challenges faced in decarbonising the built environment.
Retrofit Balsall Heath is a community-led neighbourhood project in the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham, made up of local people, community groups, and partners working together to retrofit the neighbourhood – possibly one of the first of its kind working at this scale.
On the journey to net zero, community-based initiatives like Loco Home Retrofit are key. Founded by Chris Carus and Tom Nockolds, Loco Home Retrofit is a retrofit co-operative of homeowners, trades and buildings professionals working together to make homes in Glasgow more energy efficient.
BE-ST launched a fully-funded digital construction skills training program in partnership with the HCI Skills Gateway.
The Low Carbon Passport is a first-of-its-kind, accredited course designed to equip construction professionals with the critical skills and competencies needed to deliver low carbon, energy-efficient buildings across Scotland.
The Low Carbon Passport is a first-of-its-kind, accredited course designed to equip construction professionals with the critical skills and competencies needed to deliver low carbon, energy-efficient buildings across Scotland.
The Low Carbon Passport is a first-of-its-kind, accredited course designed to equip construction professionals with the critical skills and competencies needed to deliver low carbon, energy-efficient buildings across Scotland.
