Rich’s research and development focus are hardware energy efficiency and the environmental and economic impacts of IT hardware during creation, use and disposal. He is a firm believer in the circular economy and sustainable solutions for IT hardware.

Rich has contributed to the UK’s industrial strategy through the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [BEIS] Committee and co-authored research published in multiple peer-reviewed journals, most recently the IEEE Journal of Sustainable Computing and Elsevier: Informatics and Systems.

In 2021, Rich and Techbuyer launched Interact, Techbuyer Group’s new business for low carbon, energy efficient data centre hardware analysis. Interact’s first software tool identifies ways that businesses can optimise their server refresh and recommends vendor neutral advice on which machines and configurations are best for return on investment and energy savings. The data uses real life product data from the server market and is backed by a previously completed Knowledge Transfer Partnerships [KTP] verified, ground-breaking research. This KTP was co-funded with Techbuyer, Innovate UK and the University of East London and was rated as "Outstanding" by Innovate UK.

As managing director at Interact, Rich and his team used a cutting-edge machine learning model and thousands of server records to estimate the energy consumption of servers, based only on their IT hardware configuration. Interact is the only software tool that provides concrete recommendations on IT hardware solutions, to maximise the energy efficiency and cost effectiveness of data centres. It is also the first tool of its kind to offer non-intrusive energy efficiency optimisation analysis for data centre IT hardware.

Within its first year it had already won major awards including the Data Centre Solutions Energy Efficiency Project of the Year award and the UK IT Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Interact had also signed some of the world’s largest companies within its first year of business and is helping those organisations drive massive improvements in their sustainability and technical offerings.

Rich has spoken at over 100 sustainability, innovation and industry events since 2019. This includes the keynote at Spiceworks in the USA in 2021, the keynote at Data Centre Dynamics Net-Zero Carbon conference in both 2021 and 2022, Data Centre World – London and Frankfurt as well as contributing twice with BEIS to help shape industrial strategy and provide case studies for innovations benefit for UK PLC.

Engaging with stakeholders in the industry has allowed Techbuyer and Interact to build a very impressive profile with their customer base. This has in turn increased brand perception and created hundreds of sales opportunities by increasing the reach of circular economy principles and the perception of refurbishment.

Rich is a driver behind the Techbuyer and Interact perspective of seeing the entire enterprise IT industry as partners. This mentality is based around the fact that the majority of conversations are led by large OEMs, such as HPE and Dell, so it’s important to drive a narrative, led by solid research, to provide a counter point to always buying brand new IT hardware.

Alongside this, Rich is involved in Techbuyer and Interact’s consultancy work on the Interreg West Europe funded CEDaCI project, whereby they provide technical expertise and training to European SMEs on circular economy principles and best practice.