History

The UK Centre for Moisture in Buildings (UKCMB) was founded by Neil May MBE.

Neil established UKCMB at University College London (UCL) in 2016 after developing a vision for retrofit standards frameworks. Neil was a leader in the field of sustainability and buildings, and his work focused on creating better buildings that were socially, culturally, ecologically, and philosophically sustainable.

Neil’s work included: 

• Setting up his own award-winning ecological and conservation building company, Neil May Builders
• Founding the Natural Building Technologies in 1999, and pioneered the supply of high-performance sustainable, vapour permeable insulation and envelope systems for buildings
• Bringing together a group of natural building developers to campaign against the poor standard of performance of new homes in the UK, the start of a long collaboration with the Sustainable Development Foundation
• Instrumental in establishing and nurturing organisations such as the Good Homes Alliance, the Passivhaus Trust, the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products and the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance, each of which campaigned to change practice relating to performance problems that Neil had identified
• Lobbying for the use of appropriate materials and techniques in large-scale retrofit
• Joining the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering at University College London (UCL) as a Principal Research Associate
• Collaborating on a White Paper on Moisture in Buildings at the British Standards Institution (BSI), which advocated a new principles-based approach for moisture risk assessment that has been incorporated in a new edition of BS 5250 Code of practice for the control of condensation in buildings
• Advising on environmental and building matters to the Benedictine Community at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight
• Challenging delegates to share their aspirations and problems so that the UKCMB and the industry could work together to improve understanding of moisture in buildings

Neil was trained as an historian and an anthropologist, and worked in film-making before entering the building trade in 1989. He gained hands-on knowledge of buildings and natural materials through 15 years in the construction industry, including running his own conservation and environmental building company.

In 2017 Neil was awarded an MBE ‘for services to sustainability and energy efficiency in buildings and communities’.

In 2018, faced with an inevitably fatal condition and having survived one operation, Neil bravely chose to put his affairs in order, hand-over his work to colleagues and submit to a second, very risky surgical procedure, which he sadly didn’t survive. Neil has left the Built environment community an immense and inspiring legacy of ideas and challenges.