With our passion for environmental issues and the pandemic forcing everyone to work from home, we saw an opportunity to lead by example and massively reduce our carbon footprint. Our CFD simulations require a huge number of calculations and a vast amount of computing power. So, we relocated our computing resources to Iceland. With its massive reservoir of geothermal energy, allowing us to continue our ground-breaking work using a renewable resource to power it. We also moved offices to a newly developed Eco building (https://www.perchcoworking.co.uk/eco-business-centre/building/), reducing our workplace carbon output to net zero, well ahead of the 2050 ‘net zero’ UK goal. We will have more on this in the not-too-distant future.

The pandemic has had an adverse effect on a lot of people’s mental health. We want all our colleagues to feel safe and comfortable in whatever environment they are working from, whether it be in the office or at home. These virtual workstations offer our colleagues the opportunity to be flexible in working locations as the restrictions ease, allowing more freedom in how they navigate this pandemic safely whilst being wary of their physical and mental health. For example, some of our colleagues worked in Spain and Italy, whilst being safe from the coronavirus with their families.

Given we had a large amount of now unused but very good quality and functional desktop hardware we were more than happy to donate it to a local charity, Oxford IT Bank. It is then distributed to people in need, particularly to children who need them for remote access learning.

We store our ‘virtual’ top-of-the-line workstations in Iceland. This new approach allows us to tailor everyone’s computer experience for performance depending on their role, whether it be engineer or project manager. This allows for a more efficient system so we do not use any more power or hardware than is required, and computing resources can be quickly pulled from one project to another. The virtual workspaces allow for a smaller and cleaner office space too, with the only requirement being a laptop to do one’s work from.

We look forward to continuing our work and helping our customers lead the way in built environment studies, energy & carbon saving using these new, efficient and environmentally friendly computing resources.