Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has opened the fourth cycle of its Future Industries Demonstrator, launching a “Building Better” challenge that will pay five London-based small and medium-sized enterprises up to £16,000 each to test scalable design and technology solutions aimed at improving indoor environmental health in buildings. According to the original report, the initiative is focused on practical interventions to tackle problems including poor indoor air quality, damp, overheating and energy inefficiency.

The competition will narrow applicants through a staged process: organisers will invite 25 shortlisted SMEs to refine their proposals, take part in a trial-design hackathon and a series of workshops, and then select five winners to run three‑month live trials on the Park’s testbed. Each successful participant will showcase results at the 2026 Innovation Forum; applications close on 14 September and the programme is scheduled to conclude in March 2026.

Organisers stress that the demonstrator is intended not merely as grant funding but as an on‑the‑ground market‑validation opportunity. The Park and its partners say the trials will be supported by wraparound services — including workspace, expert mentoring and access to networks — designed to accelerate solutions from prototype to commercially viable offerings. The Future Industries Demonstrator operates as a living testbed within the Park’s Innovation District, where real buildings and communities provide a practical environment for measurement and iteration.

The programme is financed through a mix of local and national funding. According to the Park’s announcement, the Mayor of London and the UK Government are providing funds via the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Greater London Authority material confirms that UKSPF allocations are used to back local business support and innovation activity across the capital, while the UK Government’s UKSPF prospectus sets out the fund’s remit to support place‑based local growth and skills investment.

The demonstrator’s organisers frame the challenge as a direct response to pressing social and environmental pressures in the capital. Shazia Hussain, chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation, said in the Park’s announcement: “With over 700,000 London households experiencing fuel poverty, and climate change increasing the risk of overheating in the capital’s buildings, the launch of this latest Future Industries Demonstrator funding couldn’t be more timely.” London’s deputy mayor for business and growth, Howard Dawber, added that the competition should help “unlock new solutions to major social and environmental challenges.” These comments underline the programme’s twin objectives of addressing immediate public‑health concerns and supporting commercial uptake of low‑carbon, health‑focused building technologies.

The Future Industries Demonstrator builds on an earlier, larger funding phase: SHIFT, the organisation managing the on‑Park programme, announced in 2023 a £1.47m package from UKSPF to back a two‑year programme intended to support scores of London SMEs across multiple themed challenges. That earlier phase set out an ambition to back up to 215 organisations with grants, workspace and mentoring — a model the current Building Better challenge follows by concentrating resources on a small number of high‑value, real‑world trials. SHIFT describes the demonstrator as mission‑led, using the Park’s testbed to accelerate innovations that can be scaled across the capital.

Applicants are being asked to demonstrate three things: innovation in concept, measurable impact on health or sustainability outcomes, and the capacity to scale beyond a single trial. The organisers emphasise that proposals must be ready for practical testing and data collection within the Park environment; the financial award covers the three‑month trial period, but success will be judged on evidence of performance, deliverable insights and market potential. The Park and SHIFT have framed these trials as a way to reduce the risks that typically prevent building‑sector innovations from reaching wider adoption.

While the programme promises an attractive route to market for early‑stage companies, organisers are careful to present the awards as tests rather than endorsements. The Park’s announcement and the managing partners describe the funding as an opportunity to validate claims under real conditions; it will be the outcomes of the three‑month trials that determine whether any given intervention can be scaled and adopted more widely across London’s building stock. Interested SMEs should note the 14 September deadline and the intention to present results at the Innovation Forum in 2026.

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Source: Noah Wire Services