Dr Lucy Acquaye

Lucy likes to use real life projects and examples in her teaching to mimic what happens in industry. This enables students to develop the practical skills to apply their knowledge and be better prepared for work beyond the classroom. Her teaching style is based on creating inclusive, collaborative, and engaging learning environments where students can discover, construct, and apply their knowledge and skills to find solutions to complex problems in the built environment.

Her teaching is informed by her knowledge, skills and experience gained working on construction projects in industry and from her research activities. At Solent University, she teaches modules focused on digitalization and sustainability in the construction industry. She taught at Texas A&M University, University of Florida and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Some of the areas she taught included sustainable construction, construction materials and methods, construction mechanics, project management and graphic communications.

• Acquaye L., (2011). Low-income homeowners and the challenges of home maintenance. Journal of the Community Development Society, January 2011.
• Acquaye Lucy, Macedo Joseli, Phillips Rhonda and White Douglas. (2007). Exploring the impacts of ballot box land use measures on affordable housing. Journal of Housing and Society. 34 (1), 45-63.
• Chini and L. Acquaye, “Effect of elevated curing temperatures on the strength and durability of concrete” RILEM Materials and Structures/Materiaux et Constructions. Vol. 38, N 281 pp. 673-679, August/September 2005.
• Chini and L. Acquaye, "Properties of Lumber Recycled from Residential Buildings," Journal of Environmental Practice, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 2001, 247-256.

2017 University of Portsmouth Vice Chancellor’s Staff Excellence Award recipient

Lucy’s research interests include sustainable development, construction digitalization and building maintenance. For her doctoral research, she investigated effects of high curing temperatures on the strength and durability of concrete and ways to make concrete more sustainable. She researched the deconstruction of disused buildings and reuse of salvaged materials in new construction to promote circularity in construction.

Her interest in affordable housing and sustainable community development led her to initiate a study into home maintenance challenges in collaboration with academics from different disciplines, local council, and community members to explore long-term solutions for sustainable home maintenance.

She researched sustainable refurbishment of a 100-year-old home and shared her findings with local community members through giving tours of the refurbished home to promote knowledge sharing by providing information about solar energy; energy efficient heating, ventilating, and lighting; water saving measures; improved indoor air quality and low operating and maintenance costs.

Exploring how sustainability and digitalization in construction industry and the built environment can be promoted and used to address critical societal challenges such as mitigating climate change and its devastating consequences.

To better understand the interactions between building structure, building fabric, building services, and building users in developing sustainable solutions for buildings and the built environment.

Investigating how academia, industry, local organizations, and community members can work together to promote and apply sustainability and digitalization principles, tools, and procedures to define, create and maintain a built environment which works in sync with the natural environment and better meets our needs in the 21^st century and beyond.