Episode 215 - RIBA's New Climate Literacy Test

This week we will be talking about the RIBA pilot Climate Literacy Test. This episode content meets PC1 - Professionalism and PC3 - Legal Framework & Processes of the Part 3 Criteria.

Resources from today's episode:

Websites:

• https://www.riba.org/work/insights-and-resources/professional-features/what-architects-need-to-know-about-the-new-pilot-climate-literacy-test/
• https://riba-academy.architecture.com/ilp/pages/description.jsf#/users/@self/courses/5216129/description
• https://riba-academy.architecture.com/ilp/pages/description.jsf#/users/@self/catalogues/150435/courses/2092107/description
• https://www.riba.org/work/insights-and-resources/mandatory-competences/
• https://www.riba.org/work/insights-and-resources/the-way-ahead/

Thank you for listening! Please follow me on Instagram @part3withme for weekly content and updates or contact me via email me at part3withme@outlook.com or on LinkedIn. 

Website: www.part3withme.com

Join me next week for more Part3 With Me time.

If you liked this episode please give it a rating to help reach more fellow Part3er's!

Transcript

Episode 215:

Hello and Welcome to the Part3 with me podcast. 

The show designed to help Part 3 students kick-start their careers as qualified architects, while offering valuable refresher episodes for practising professionals.

If you’d like to support the podcast and help us keep creating great content, check out the link in the episode notes to subscribe. We also provide one-to-one mentoring to help you prepare for your submissions, exams, and interview, visit our website to learn more, connect with us on LinkedIn via the Part 3 With Me page, find us on Instagram at @part3withme, or email at part3withme@outlook.com.

I am your host Maria Skoutari and this week we will be talking about the RIBA pilot Climate Literacy Test. Todays’ episode meets PC1 & PC3 of the Part 3 Criteria.

Climate knowledge has been an increasingly prominent topic across the profession for some years, but the introduction of a formal, assessed test marks a clear shift in RIBA's expectations. This is no longer a question of whether architects choose to engage with sustainability it is now a defined professional competency that all Chartered Members are required to demonstrate. In this episode I want to give you the full picture, starting with why this test exists and the broader framework it sits within, before working through exactly what is being tested and how best to approach your preparation.

So let’s start with its Framework:

To understand the Climate Literacy Test, you first need to understand the framework that created it. In 2021, RIBA published a document called 'The Way Ahead', which set out a new Education and Professional Development Framework for the profession. This was described by RIBA at the time as a once-in-a-generation reform and that language was not an overstatement. It represented the first time that RIBA had created a single standard covering both pre- and post-registration education and professional development, connecting what happens in schools of architecture with what is expected of practising Chartered Members throughout their careers.

The framework was developed through consultation with RIBA expert committees and elected representatives, and it emerged against a backdrop of significant pressure on the profession. The Grenfell Tower fire had placed building safety and professional competency under intense public and regulatory scrutiny. The climate emergency had made sustainability knowledge an urgent professional priority. And growing questions around professional ethics had reinforced the need for architects to be able to demonstrate, not just claim, their competence in critical subject areas.

The Way Ahead framework introduced several key components: 

• education themes and values, 
• career role levels, 
• a core CPD curriculum, 
• and, crucially for our purposes today, mandatory competencies. 

RIBA was unequivocal in its reasoning, architects need a standard of education and practice that reflects the current ethical challenges, environmental concerns, and up-to-date knowledge requirements in order to remain relevant and to continue serving the needs of clients and society appropriately. The new framework sets out to make that standard real and demonstrable, rather than assumed.

What were the mandatory competecies identied within the Way Ahead Framework:

Under The Way Ahead framework, RIBA has identified three mandatory competencies that all Chartered Members must demonstrate in order to renew their Chartered Membership. 

These are: 

• Health and Life Safety, 
• Climate Literacy, 
• and Ethical Practice. 

A fourth mandatory competency, Research Literacy, may follow at a later date.

Each mandatory competency is supported by a Knowledge Schedule, which sets out the subject matter against which members will be assessed. The Knowledge Schedules can be downloaded from the RIBA website and serve as the formal basis for each assessment. Critically, passing these assessments is not a one-off requirement, Chartered Members will be reassessed every five years to ensure their competence remains current. As the profession and the regulatory landscape continue to evolve, the knowledge schedules and assessment processes will also evolve to reflect that.

Health and Life Safety, which we covered in Episode 160 & 161, was the first mandatory competency to launch. From 1 January 2025, all practising Chartered Members whose work requires them to carry out designer's duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and the Building Regulations (Amendment) Regulations 2023 in England are required to take and pass the RIBA Health and Safety Test. This replaced the earlier voluntary pilot that had been available since 2021 and was updated to include duties introduced by the Building Safety Act 2022. Members who have passed the test within the last five years do not need to retake it when the formal mandatory version rolled out.

Climate Literacy is the second mandatory competency to move into the testing phase, and the pilot test is the first step in that process. 

Ethical Practice will follow which will likely be based on the RIBA Ethical Guide. 

All three mandatory competencies, alongside the CPD compliance policy, make up what RIBA describes as the lifelong learning requirements for all Chartered Members.

So why has the RIBA introduced a formal test for Climate Literacy in addition to the Health & Safety Test:

The built environment is responsible for a significant proportion of the UK's carbon emissions, across both the operational energy consumed by buildings in use and the embodied carbon locked into the materials and construction processes involved in creating them. As the UK works towards its legally binding net zero targets, the profession that designs, procures, and oversees the construction of buildings is in a uniquely influential position. If architects do not have a consistent, high-level understanding of climate science, carbon accounting, passive design strategies, circular economy principles, and the legislative landscape, the ambitions set out in national policy will simply not be achieved at the building level.

RIBA has been explicit about this. The test is designed to raise the threshold of understanding across the profession, reflecting a broader shift towards accountability, performance-based design, and the need for architects to lead on climate-positive solutions. The aim is to establish a consistent baseline of climate knowledge across the profession, ensuring that architects are equipped to respond to the climate emergency, meet client expectations, and play a leading role in delivering low-carbon, resilient buildings.

The introduction of a formal test also responds to what the profession itself has been saying. The Cross-Industry Action Group, a body working across built environment organisations, has been closely involved in defining what RIBA's Climate Literacy mandatory competency should look like, including the structure of the Knowledge Schedule. The Knowledge Schedule's subject headings map directly against the structure of the Climate Framework, a global initiative founded by Mina Hasman, the author of the RIBA Climate Guide, whose taxonomy was officially adopted by RIBA in 2020. There is, in other words, a clear intellectual lineage from industry collaboration to formal assessment, and that gives the test both rigour and legitimacy.

So what should members expect from the Climate Literacy Test, what does it cover:

The test that is currently available is described by RIBA as a pilot, and it is worth understanding what that means in practice. RIBA has been transparent about the reasoning in that the pilot is intended to assess the effectiveness and clarity of the questions and answers before the test is formally and mandatorily launched. By running the test as a pilot first, RIBA is able to identify any questions that are ambiguous or that do not adequately discriminate between different levels of understanding, and to refine them before the mandatory version goes live. The pilot will close in June 2026, after which RIBA will make any necessary clarification edits.

So the key practical details you need to know include that:

• The pilot Climate Literacy Test is currently active and must be completed by 30 June 2026, as mentioned.
• It is open to all RIBA Chartered Members, wherever they are based in the world.
• The test is a 60-minute online assessment, accessible via the RIBA Academy platform.
• It consists of 40 multiple-choice questions, randomly generated from a larger question bank. No two sittings will present exactly the same set of questions, which means preparation needs to be broad rather than question-specific.
• Where a question requires multiple answers, it still counts as a single point.
• The minimum passing score is 32 out of 40.
• Chartered Members who pass the pilot test receive a certification valid for five years from the date of their pass. This is a significant practical benefit as it means that if you pass the pilot now, you will not need to retake the test when the formal mandatory version launches in the future. Your five-year clock starts from the date of your pilot pass result.
• The questions are connected to the RIBA Climate Guide and other RIBA-produced resources, which means those resources are the most direct preparation materials available.

So the Climate Literacy Test itself draws on RIBA's Climate Literacy Knowledge Schedule, which was developed with support from the Cross-Industry Action Group and is aligned with the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge. The knowledge schedule sets out the subject areas that RIBA Chartered Architects must understand to design buildings that deliver sustainable outcomes. At a high level, the test covers seven subject areas.

The first is global legislation and fundamentals of climate science. This covers the foundational knowledge that underpins all climate-conscious practice, the scientific basis of climate change, international agreements such as the Paris Agreement, and the UK's own legislative landscape, including the Climate Change Act and the net zero commitments it enshrines. It also covers the built environment's specific contribution to carbon emissions and what the relevant regulations, benchmarks, and construction industry guidance frameworks require. For architects, this means understanding not just what the law currently says, but the direction of travel on what future regulations are likely to require and how current projects can be designed to remain relevant as those requirements tighten.

The second subject area is human wellbeing. This is an important counterbalance to what might otherwise be an exclusively carbon-focused lens. RIBA's Climate Literacy Knowledge Schedule includes health and wellbeing, communities and inclusion, social value, biophilic and sensory design, and user experience and occupancy behaviour. The point is that climate-conscious design should not be pursued at the expense of the people who use buildings. Good daylighting, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, connections to nature, and inclusive, accessible environments are not luxuries they are part of what it means to design a building that performs well for its occupants over its full life. This subject area also connects directly to post-occupancy evaluation and the importance of understanding how buildings actually perform once occupied, rather than relying solely on design-stage modelling.

The third area is the circular economy. This is one of the more expansive subject areas in scope, covering resource efficiency, designing for adaptability and change of use, the environmental and health impacts of materials and waste, the concept of waste as a resource, and responsible and ethical sourcing. In practical terms, this means understanding lifecycle assessment, material passports, the hierarchy of interventions that prioritises retrofit and reuse above demolition and new build, and the skills needed to specify materials with low embodied carbon and high recyclability. The existing built stock presents both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity in meeting net zero targets and understanding how to work with existing buildings, rather than defaulting to replacement, is a core circular economy skill.

The fourth subject area is sustainable outcomes. This covers outcomes-based briefing and design, the use of the RIBA Sustainable Outcomes Guide, Plan for Use and Soft Landings approaches, and post-occupancy evaluation. The underlying principle is that sustainability cannot be declared at design stage and assumed to persist, it has to be tracked, monitored, and evidenced through actual building performance. This connects directly to the growing expectation that architects will engage with performance data after practical completion, helping clients understand how their building is performing against its design targets and what adjustments may be needed.

The fifth and most technically detailed subject area is energy and carbon. This is the area that many architects will find most familiar from existing CPD and practice, but the test requires a high-level understanding across a wide range of sub-topics. These include passive design strategies such as building form, fabric performance, insulation continuity, air tightness, thermal bridging, thermal mass, natural ventilation and cooling, solar gains and overheating risk as well as active building systems and low-carbon technology. On the carbon side, it covers whole-life carbon assessment for both new build and retrofit, the difference between operational and embodied carbon, carbon modelling and assessment tools, offsetting, and the relationship between operational energy performance and in-use building consumption data. Key metrics and assessment methodologies including SAP, SBEM, IES, PHPP, BREEAM, and LEED are within scope, as are the performance gap and the measures needed to close it.

The sixth subject area is biodiversity. This covers biodiversity net gain, nature-based solutions, land use and building density, bioregional urbanism, urban farming and sustainable food production, and the legislative frameworks that govern the natural environment. For architects, this increasingly means engaging with ecology surveys and biodiversity assessments as a standard part of the project process, understanding what the Environment Act's mandatory biodiversity net gain requirements mean in practice, and thinking about how buildings and their sites can support rather than diminish ecological value. Green roofs, sustainable drainage systems, and planting strategies that support native species are all part of this picture.

And the seventh and final subject area, relates to water and connectivity, covering water efficiency, water harvesting and recycling, sustainable urban drainage, flood risk management, and the Flood and Water Management Act. On the connectivity side, it includes site selection and its relationship to urban ecosystems, compact development and walkability, low-carbon transport, and planning for the future of transportation. For architects, this means thinking about the relationship between building design and the broader infrastructure within which buildings sit and how occupants are likely to travel to and from buildings, how water is managed both on site and in relation to wider catchments, and how design decisions at the building scale connect to systemic climate resilience at the urban and regional scale.

Chartered Members can prepare for the test by referring to the RIBA Climate Guide, as mentioned, as well as CPD resources available through the RIBA Academy. The RIBA Academy also hosts a dedicated Climate Literacy CPD course designed to support members in preparing for the test. RIBA has also published specific topic modules, including Climate Literacy: Energy and Carbon, which provides a focused roadmap for delivering low and zero-carbon buildings with specific reference to the Energy and Carbon section of the Knowledge Schedule. Another relevant module is Materials and Calculating Carbon, which covers embodied and whole-life carbon analysis and how to embed it into an iterative design process, including where to find the data you need, how to question manufacturers, and what carbon passports are and how they work.

Beyond the formal resources, it is also worth downloading and reading the RIBA Climate Literacy Knowledge Schedule itself, which is available free of charge from the RIBA website. This document sets out the precise subject headings against which competence will be assessed and gives you a clear map of the terrain.

And to conclude today’s episode, let’s briefly run through what this test means for practices:

The test is explicitly not designed to assess deep technical expertise it operates at a high level of awareness and understanding across a broad range of subjects. RIBA's language is that architects must demonstrate a fundamental level of awareness and understanding of priority subjects in order to be competent to practise and to provide public assurance. The word 'fundamental' is doing important work here. The test is a baseline, not a ceiling. Passing it does not mean you are a sustainability specialist, it means you have the foundational knowledge to engage responsibly with climate considerations across the full breadth of your practice.

That said, the process of preparing for and passing the test can itself be valuable in ways that go beyond compliance. Many architects have developed deep expertise in particular areas of sustainability such as energy modelling, or embodied carbon, or passive house design while remaining less confident in others. The broad scope of the Knowledge Schedule is a prompt to audit those gaps and address them. The circular economy section may push architects to think more systematically about material lifecycles. The biodiversity and water sections may open up engagement with ecology and drainage that has previously been treated as the domain of specialist consultants. And the human wellbeing section may strengthen the connections between sustainability practice and inclusive design.

The test is also a signal of where the profession is heading. As mandatory competencies embed further with Ethical Practice following Climate Literacy, and the reassessment cycle running every five years the expectation is that professional knowledge will be regularly renewed and updated. The knowledge schedules and assessment processes will evolve as the regulatory landscape changes and as the science and practice of sustainable design advance. Architects who treat the pilot test as an opportunity to genuinely engage with the subject matter, rather than simply as a compliance exercise to be completed before 30 June 2026, will be better placed to meet those evolving expectations.

Let’s sum what we ran through today:

• RIBA's mandatory competency framework, introduced through 'The Way Ahead: Education and Professional Development Framework', requires all Chartered Members to demonstrate competence in Health and Life Safety, Climate Literacy, and Ethical Practice. A fourth competency, Research Literacy, may follow at a later date.
• The pilot Climate Literacy Test is currently active and must be completed by 30 June 2026. It is open to all RIBA Chartered Members.
• The test consists of 40 randomly generated multiple-choice questions from a question bank, completed within 60 minutes, with a minimum pass mark of 32 out of 40.
• Chartered Members who pass the pilot receive a certification valid for five years, meaning they will not need to retake the test when the formal mandatory version launches.
• The test covers seven subject areas at a high level including: global legislation and climate science fundamentals, human wellbeing factors, circular economy, sustainable outcomes, energy and carbon, biodiversity, and water and connectivity.
• The primary preparation resource is the RIBA Climate Guide, which is structured around the six themes of the Climate Literacy Knowledge Schedule. Dedicated Climate Literacy CPD courses are also available on the RIBA Academy.
• The Climate Literacy Knowledge Schedule, freely downloadable from the RIBA website, sets out the precise subject headings against which competence is assessed and is an essential reference point for any member preparing for the test.
• Once formally mandated, the Climate Literacy Test will form part of the lifelong learning requirements for renewing Chartered Membership, alongside the CPD compliance policy, with reassessment every five years.