MiPermit Inspiration Award: Vaso Vaina

British Parking Awards 2024

Designing car parks is often seen as a mundane task between architectural groups and is regularly frowned upon. It is sadly true that other architects already involved in the sector, from other practices, refer to car parks as “boring” or not interesting structures. But not for Vaso Vaina, managing director of Stripe Consulting. She is an architect who treats these structures with the respect they deserve, applying to each design the latest in architecture, fire safety and engineering.

Vaso Vaina joined Stripe Consulting as a design manager in 2018, coming from a similar position in a major UK housebuilding company, Churchill Retirement Living. She then progressed to become head of architecture

In August 2021, the company’s owner sold the majority of the company shares to Ballast Nedam UK. This created an opening for a managing director in Stripe. In recognition of her hard work and dedication to the company’s future, she was selected for the director role and since then she has been overseeing the company’s multi-disciplinary team operations.

Vaina has been practicing since 2004 as a fully qualified architect and has been involved in the design of award winning developments. Vaina is a RIBA chartered architect, chair of the RIBA Surrey branch, and a fellow of the Chartered Managers Institute. She also mentors students at Brighton and Portsmouth architectural schools, as part of the RIBA Future Architects scheme, and gives her own time to participate at mock interview events.

Setting a vision

Vaso drafted Stripe’s first ever company mission and vision statements, embedding sustainable design principles. It reads: “Our vision is to be the number one consultancy choice for all clients with car park related projects. Lead and contribute developments in the car parking sector. Design efficiently, specify sustainably, with repurposing and recycling at the core of every decision.”

Vaina actively encourages engineers and architects to consider embodied carbon from early design and specification stages. She allocates time to staff to get familiar with the latest developments in the sector. These include seminars on carbon and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) calculations. She is raising awareness about BNG that will affect all car park applications moving forward, as this became law in April 2024.

Stripe moved to a brand new office in February 2024 and as a business it has made significant progress in going paperless and implementing a new sustainability policy. It is now sharing waste and mileage data with the wider group and contributes to quarterly reviews and annual data collection.

Vaina also encourages clients to engage with building contractors with strong social value records:

• creating jobs and long-term employment
• ethical and low-carbon supply chain sourcing
• engaging charities, community organisations and non-profit organisations (NPOs)
• promoting a sense of identity and cohesion within communities.

For example, she led the multi-disciplinary team that delivered a £25m multi-storey car park in a deprived neighbourhood in Blackpool, working with subcontractors employing ex-detainees.

Championing inclusivity, diversity and wellbeing

Transitioning the company from a single company owner to being part of a bigger group, Vaina saw an opportunity to reshape the team. In all recruitment processes she looks out for the most qualified candidate to take the role, regardless of gender, age, nationality or faith and beliefs. She never asks questions during an interview that would reveal personal information about a candidate. She organises meetings with recruiters, making clear the company’s inclusive policy and actively encouraging them to look within all professional and social groups.

The COVID lockdown years had a significant affect in the way Stripe works. Whilst it appeared unthinkable to operate a multidisciplinary design team remotely at first, during the pandemic this became the norm. Under Vaina’s leadership the company continued with remote working for a full two years after the restrictions were lifted. Whilst working from home benefitted some, others were left feeling isolated and it impacted their mental health. Managers including herself blended family and professional boundaries and reached a point of burnout.

Vaina recognised that not one rule fits all and she made adjustments to suit individual circumstances. While keeping an eye on productivity and individual performance, she allowed flexibility for employees who decided to move away from the office during COVID. She allows flexibility also for new mums and dads with school age children.

She encourages conversations about mental health within the business and she reached out to external providers for mentoring tips for managers. Vaina introduced physical and mental health questionnaires. She had looked to nominate a mental health ambassador, but feedback from staff suggested that they would open up more easily to someone external to the business. She then trusted this role to a new HR advisor role, created in the UK by the group of companies.

Vaso also regularly organises H&S training modules involving her whole team.

Parking sector ambassador

Through her involvement with RIBA, Vaina champions the values of good design in the car parking sector. She is a great car parking ambassador. When she attended a Members Forum event at the RIBA headquarters at Portland Place in London, Vaina was the only architect with car parking design experience among the participants and didn’t shy away from advocating the sector.

She is also mentoring new talent into the sector and safeguarding its bright future in terms of necessary skills, by bringing new architectural talent to the sector.

Vaina also made time to help develop the programme at Landor LINKS’s Car Parks conference, held in March 2024. She worked in close cooperation with programmer Mark Moran, editor of Parking Review, on shaping an agenda that encapsulated the full design life of a car park. From inception and initial design stages, to lifecare plans and maintaining them in the years to come. The conference covered subjects like the change in 2023 to the car park designs standards and raised awareness on ever-changing standards regarding fire safety and introduction of new uses. The conference gathered significant interest from car parking sector peers associated with the built environment and a sequel is planned for 2025.

Vaina also regularly uses social media platforms like LinkedIn to promote fire safety, structural safety and compliance issues associated with car parking projects.

By initiating her registration in the RIBA Principle Designers database, Vaina will be the first car park specialist architect to serve these type of structures, following the introduction of the Building Safety Act in October 2023. And by initiating her registration in the RIBA Client Advisor register, she will also be the first person qualified and with extensive industry experience to provide client advice, in both the private and public sectors.

Accreditations like these, bearing the logo of an architectural institute like RIBA, help to give to the design of car parks the importance and attention it deserves.
Vaina is an active member of the British Parking Association (BPA) Suicide Prevention working group, leading to the publication of the Suicide Prevention in Car Parks factsheet and guide. She regularly presents at national exhibition and conference events on parking, and also participates in the BPA’s Structures and Women in Parking Groups.

Vaina assisted Sara Fisher when the BPA was creating a presentation to launch their Park Access accreditation. She drew from the extensive library of projects she designed and completed, showcasing the successful implementation of accessible bay design and provided most of the visuals that Fisher used in her slides. This presentation was shared in all working groups within the BPA, Parkex and the Car Parks conference.

Vaina regularly presents at the BPA main event Parkex, covering the very sensitive subject of suicide prevention. Last year she presented some practical examples of what can be done to eliminate or reduce the risk in existing and new structures. This year at Parkex in Birmingham she participated in an interactive session, encouraging all participants to discuss suicide prevention.

Vaina attended the UKREiiF in Leeds this year, as part of the Women in Architecture delegation, raising the profile of women in construction. She met with several teams raising the profile of car park specialist designers in this huge event.

She maintains high standards in all project she delivers with her team. Her team successfully renews their ISO and Safe Contractor accreditations. The fact that she gains repeat business from clients and numerous positive feedback statements illustrates the level of excellence she achieves in her work in the car parking sector.

Winner’s words

Vaso Vaina: “I really hope that I have received this award for the work that I have put behind suicide prevention in car parks, for mentoring young architects to try to enter the sector, and for educating the industry on latest changes of design standards.”

The British Parking Awards

Created and presented by Parking Review magazine, the British Parking Awards are an independent competition. The awards recognise the leading examples of car park management, enforcement, design and team work.

The British Parking Awards 2024 ceremony took place at the Royal Lancaster London on 13 September.

Read and download the 2025 WINNERS EDITION of PARKING REVIEW by clicking HERE

To find out more about the competition and next year’s event check out the official website.
www.britishparkingawards.uk