Katie Symons is Principal Advisor, Engineering, in the Building System Performance Branch of MBIE. She is leading the development of the whole-of-life embodied carbon framework of MBIE’s Building for Climate Change programme, which has been set up to deliver emissions reductions in the Building and Construction sector, and making building in New Zealand more resilient in the face of risks presented by climate change.

Katie is a chartered member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), Engineering New Zealand (CMEngNZ), a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) and an International Professional Engineer, IntPE(NZ). She has over 15 years’ experience designing building structures in both the UK and New Zealand. She has particular expertise in the design of mass timber buildings, and assessing the embodied carbon of buildings and construction materials.

Working as a consultant engineer, she developed tools and methodologies to integrate carbon assessment into the building design process. She has also undertaken research work at Cambridge University on the application of environmental life cycle assessment in construction, and is the author of a number of academic papers on the subject.

She is the lead author of the New Zealand Wood Design guide chapter “Timber, Carbon and the Environment” funded by the WPMA and published in February 2020.