Shire Green Roof Substrates Ltd Team
Dr Charles Fentiman, MSC, PHD, FIMMM, CEng,
Charles has held technical senior positions with leading building materials producers, including Lafarge, Building Adhesives where he has been actively involved with concrete R&D and customer support activities. His early career was in product development and formulated the first rapid setting hydraulic field-joint concretes and a range of repair mortars and following this became the Technical Manager of Lafarge Aluminates (UK) where his responsibilities also included Quality Management.
He has a long association with the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) and has completed a term as chairman of the Cement & Concrete Committee and through these links got to know Chris Hallas, and soon started collaborating on projects related to building materials.
He has also strong links with academic centres working in the materials field particularly in relation to cements, concrete and ceramics and through the appropriate bodies is regularly involved in setting up and evaluating research projects. He has also been involved with organising scientific Conferences and Seminars and regularly reviews articles submitted for publication in scientific press. He has recently edited Calcium Aluminates - Proceedings of the Centenary Conference 2008 which is rapidly becoming the Standard text on these unusual cements. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Romanian Journal of Materials.
During his time as a Consultant he has increasingly been involved with the development of sustainable aggregates for waste materials and finding new uses for them. He is a keen birdwatcher and got to know Dusty Gedge while they both shared watching out for migrating birds in London's Docklands and when discussions turned to green roofs a new application for these aggregates became apparent! He was soon applying his Research and Development skills to formulate green roof substrates with these aggregates and together with Dusty and Royal Holloway (University of London) established the PhD project undertaken by Chloe Molineux to better understand what makes a good substrate!
Miss Chloe Molineux – BSc Biology
I have always held an interest in both science and art/design but chose to do a general biology degree at Royal Holloway University of London. In my third year as an undergraduate, I researched green roof plants in Professor Alan Gange's laboratory for a large project and was fortunate to meet Dusty Gedge, the green roof Guru.
I loved nearly all biology topics I studied but was pleased when a postgraduate opportunity at Royal Holloway arose. I am now researching for a Ph.D relating to green roof ecology. The purpose of my study is to look at the properties of various substrates supplied by Shire Minerals and see how they relate to plant growth. This is vital as we believe that Green roofs are exciting habitats that could be tailored to specific requirements with the use of different recycled materials.
My interests include, green roof design (for both aesthetics and environmental function) conservation, animal behaviour and scientific communication. I hope to graduate at the end of 2009 and continue a career in biology.
My thanks go to Dusty and Charles Fentiman for their huge efforts in getting this work off the ground and for their continual support and guidance. Also to Alan and Charles who supervise this project and keep me on track and Shire minerals for supplying me with lots of material!