New leadership for AECB

Ste Garlick, left, and Chris Iredale

Ste Garlick, left, and Chris Iredale

The appointments mark a new approach to the group’s leadership, with a dual fractional leadership model designed to ensure both leaders remain actively engaged in professional practice while leading the organisation.

Both will continue in their existing professional roles while leading the AECB, ensuring the organisation benefits from leaders who remain actively involved in the day-to-day challenges and opportunities facing the built environment.

Garlick joins the AECB from multidisciplinary design practice BDP (Building Design Partnership), where he is the strategic and advisory lead for decarbonisation and retrofit. An experienced architect and sustainability leader, he combines technical expertise with collaborative leadership to help organisations navigate complex sustainability challenges, adapt their buildings and estates, and build organisational resilience. At the AECB, his focus will be on strengthening collaboration across a growing membership, building on the organisation’s evidence-based approach to building performance, and broadening its influence across the wider built environment.

Iredale brings more than 25 years’ experience founding, scaling and exiting businesses across manufacturing, retail, construction and professional services. His career includes co-founding, growing and exiting a leading manufacturing business to more than £9 million turnover, delivering 38% direct sales growth for a construction group and, most recently, operating at group level across multiple businesses within The Five Rise Group. He continues to run Thriven, his fractional growth partner practice supporting founder-led and private-equity backed businesses, alongside his role at the AECB, where he will lead operational development, governance and organisational growth.

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