Lauren Boyd

Lauren started her career in engineering, working as a geotechnical engineer in NZ (for Beca Ltd) and the UK. After walking the length of Aotearoa's South Island along Te Araroa trail (the long pathway) in 2022, she broadened her focus to sustainability advisory for the built environment, integrating sustainability principles into engineering projects.

At Beca she led a project looking at setting 1.5C aligned carbon targets for infrastructure projects, and coordinated a study and industry-wide workshop to build evidence base for a bio-economy pilot centre. She also led a project to develop a carbon emissions baseline for the (previous) NZ Water Entities with associated carbon reduction guidance, and co-developed guidance for Engineering NZ on applying circular economy principles to projects. 

Through her experience in past roles, she realised we need to look beyond carbon, and measure impacts across broader environmental issues' and use data and science to help us make good decisions. This led her to join the Planetary Accounting Network (PAN) in 2024. At PAN she has delivered a wide range of Planetary Accounting assessments, for both products and organisations, and developed PAN's training programmes for schools and practitioners. She leads PAN's Planetary Accounting for the built environment workstream; making it easier for the construction sector to understand the environmental impact of materials to support informed design, facilitate comparisons between products and buildings, and enable transparent communication of overall performance.

Lauren will be co-facilitating the Introduction to Planetary Accounting Workshop during the Better Building Day at Wao Summit 2025.