After more than 200 projects and 30 years’ championing high performance, low energy building and building services' design, Aleksandra Sasha Krstanovic has been appointed as one of just 12 CIBSE Board Members. This exceptional feat comes as her MEP Design Consultancy, mstep, celebrates its 5th year in business.
CIBSE Board Members form the governing body of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), responsible for the organisation's strategic direction and overall management. The CIBSE Board is a leadership team that is dedicated to advancing the building services engineering profession.
Sasha, as she prefers to be known, is a passionate ambassador for the role of building engineering and, more specifically, the importance of mechanical and electrical engineering input within the design team. She has both an exciting and unusual resume under her belt, having started her career with an A-level equivalent in architectural technology in Belgrade, Serbia. She later studied mechanical engineering at the University of Belgrade and then finalized her Bachelor’s Degree at Imperial College London.
When Sasha started out in the UK in 1997, building services engineering looked very different. Engineers wouldn’t be involved in building design until the project was advanced, which often meant it would be too late to make a meaningful, positive impact. Of course, that didn’t stop Sasha from being a low energy and low carbon design champion from the very start of her career! From MEP design of the first BREEAM excellent building of 21 Century through to delivering the first zero carbon laboratory in the world and leading the MEP team on the refurbishment of the 180,000m2 United Nations seat in Geneva, Sasha has always championed responsible design across the disciplines. Through being aware of and communicating the opportunities to the design and client teams she helped achieve exceptional energy and carbon performance long before this was mandatory.
Some of of Sasha’s earlier projects are the University of Nottingham's Energy Technology Building - the world’s first zero carbon laboratory; The Apex in Bury St Edmunds - a music auditorium that is fully heated and cooled by an underground lake; and Turnmill in Clerkenwell - London's first speculative commercial office to rely solely on ground source heat pumps for all its heating and cooling.
In 2015, Sasha volunteered for the CIBSE Pilot Mentoring scheme and mentored two women who did not have a mentoring scheme in their organisations. In her own words, this experience has helped shape her as a mentor, and she has since mentored more than a dozen engineers through company schemes such as AECOM's M Circles, ReWire Mentoring, and individually through CIBSE and IMechE chartership journeys.
In 2020, after having worked for a variety of national and global consultancies, she founded mstep, an MEP Design Consultancy in London. mstep are passionate about creating sustainable buildings that are not only energy-efficient but also enhance the well-being of their occupants. At the firm’s core is the belief that sustainable design is not just about reducing environmental impact but also about creating spaces that are healthy, comfortable, and inspiring - and they are certainly not afraid to take on a level of complexity that many others find uninspiring.
In 2021, just one year after starting mstep’s journey, Sasha won CIBSE Building Performance Engineer of the Year 2021; a significant achievement that recognises outstanding contributions to the field of building services engineering. This incredible feat then led to Sasha becoming a CIBSE Council Member in 2023.
Already a participant on panels discussing topics of ESG, inclusion and diversity, a Director and steering group member of the Equilibrium Network (EQN) (an organisation focused on supporting females in the UK built environment in getting a voice and a space at decision making tables), a former Trustee of the University Design Forum and a CIBSE Council Member, Sasha is now proudly a member of the CIBSE Board.
Sasha says, “It is such an honour to become a CIBSE Board Member. I believe that an institution, same as an individual leads and inspires by example: now is the time when building services engineers are more than ever in a position to help the global drive towards net zero. The responsibility for operational (and an accountable portion of the embodied) Carbon emissions rest with us and it is our opportunity to shine.”
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