About Us
Our Story
Innovate heat was born to help narrow the industry-wide gap between consultancy and build in low-carbon heating and cooling technologies. Will and Josh merged their joint experience in detailed design and construction management respectively to create a company that can take responsibility for the whole project cycle, from concept through to commissioning. Armed with Gary’s lifetime of leadership experience in complex engineering projects around the world, today Innovate Heat proves that interdisciplinary excellence and a lifecycle approach to projects can result in efficient and reliable results without the stopgaps holding the industry back.
The team started from their East London office and have grown to a small but adept team of strong engineers who individually have specialist expertise in areas including geology, controls programming and commissioning. Today they operate from an additional office in West London and work closely together to learn and deliver as individuals and as an institution.
Our Approach
Early involvement
We believe we bring the most value to a project when we are engaged early.
Our experience designing, delivering and maintaining water source and ground source heat pump systems means we understand how decisions made at the very beginning of a project can affect everything that follows. Getting involved early allows us to bring that practical experience to the table when it can have the greatest impact.
That might mean supporting a wider MEP consultancy with specialist our knowledge, or working directly with a client as part of a turnkey package. Either way, our aim is the same: to help make informed decisions early, avoid the pitfalls we've encountered on previous projects, and create a solution that works not just on paper, but in practice.
Every system we deliver and maintain adds to that experience. We continually refine the way we work, evolving our processes to offer the best solution.
Innovation
We enjoy looking beyond our own sector and finding proven ideas, technologies and approaches that can be applied differently within ours. This enables us to offer unique innovative ideas while ensure that the system will still be reliable and robust.
For us, the best innovation isn't about using something simply because it's new. It's about finding a better way to solve the problem.
Director Involement
Our carefully curated team works closely on each project under a Director’s leadership. We ensure our team is responsive and meaningfully engaged with our clients from everything from concept, design, build, handover, and maintenance. Under the direction of our core team, our trusted subcontractors and sub consultants, work seamlessly with us as needed.
Sharing knowledge
We pride ourselves on prioritising learning, with internal and external team training sessions, a commitment to allowing our staff to undertake independent learning, and exploring innovation in engineering to widen our understanding of developing technologies. The commitment to learning goes beyond our team - we firmly believe knowledge is meant to be developed and shared; our meetings with our clients are spaces to openly relay what we know. Some clients have described our design team meetings as akin to ‘Continuing Professional Development’.
Working with regulators
Many of our projects involve working closely with environmental and regulatory authorities, particularly the Environment Agency. Because we deal with them regularly,we understand their processes, the outcomes they’re looking for and, importantly, how best to work with them.
This experience helps us navigate regulatory requirements from an early stage, have the right conversations at the right time, and keep projects moving in the right direction.
Leadership
Joshua Cornford, Director
Joshua Cornford has a varied background across commissioning, design and project management. Starting his career in commissioning, Josh developed a practical understanding of how systems operate, which later shaped his approach to both design and project delivery.
His experience spans Thames Water and several design-and-build contractors, with highlights including an open-loop heat network, one of the UK’s first marine-source heat pump systems, and the delivery of over 30 Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme projects.
Josh is responsible for ensuring our projects are delivered and maintained to the high standards we set ourselves.
William Pape, Director
Will is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with experience across a variety of roles as both consultant and design & build contractor. He specialises in the design and build of heat pump installations delivering heat decarbonisation projects across several sectors.
He has experience leading on a variety of projects such as energy centre design, district heating, open and closed-loop ground source, and marine source applications with building types including commercial, healthcare and educational both new and retrofit. He leads on design at Innovate Heat.
Gary Page, Director
Gary has extensive experience in delivering construction projects in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has run complex projects including dam constructions and the setting up of manufacturing and process plants. He has extensive field experience of hydrogeology and has managed the drilling of over a thousand wells.
His experience of lead roles in mechanical engineering, civil design, and construction management give him a unique level of engineering and cross-disciplinary integration capability.