Indoor air quality is an essential feature of a healthy, resilient and sustainable building, but what are some of the most challenging technical indicators and common mistakes? And what do the Green Star credits intend to achieve? Join our Insights session to hear about Green Star case studies and the challenges associated with indoor air quality. Designed for industry practitioners, this webinar is an opportunity to discuss how we can achieve and improve air quality results in our buildings, today and in the future.
Deep dive into these issues:
- Which stakeholders need to be involved and how do we ensure compliance?
- Where is the research going?
- How might net zero and all-electric designs meet indoor air quality standards?
- The Covid question: How is health and safety impacted by indoor air quality?
Speakers:
- Brenda Kingston, Director, Sustainability, WSP
- Marco De Santis, Head of Technical & Deputy General Manager, Mapei Australia
- Leigh Gibb, Sustainability Manager, Norman Disney & Young A/Prof
- Christhina Candido, Director | SHE (Sustainable and Healthy Environments) Lab, The University of Melbourne
- Facilitator: Ian Adams, ESD Consultant, Organica Engineering Pty Ltd
As part of a vision for reconciliation, organisations need to create equitable, inclusive and sustainable societies for today and future generations. In Australia, all projects exist on a First Nations country and there is a need to seek to connect the work that we do today to the enduring culture and history of our First Nation’s people. We have a strong, rich history that should be celebrated and included.
By collaborating with Traditional Owners through co-design principals and engaging in respectful, authentic and ethical discussions, incorporating Indigenous knowledge and culture in the designs of infrastructure and built environment projects, organisations play a key role in creating strong and culturally respectful relationships with Indigenous communities and connection to the land.
WSP has been at the forefront of indigenous design and engagement for a number of years and have seen fantastic results delivered for clients, First Nation’s people and local communities.
Join us as Allan Murray, Principal Consultant, Aboriginal Affairs at WSP discusses the ways in which the organisation has made indigenous design and consulting a key part of their business and the impact this has had on their clients and the community.
Philip Oldfield, Associate Professor of Architecture at UNSW Sydney, shares insights on the sustainable performance of tall buildings, and strategies to reduce their carbon footprint.
Tall buildings are a divisive building type. There are many who think they are inherently unsustainable, pointing to their high energy requirements, greater material needs and general unsuitability for family housing. However, others highlight their ability to foster high-density living and low-carbon lifestyles as an opportunity for efficient future cities.
In this webinar, Philip Oldfield talks about the evidence base for and against tall buildings from a sustainability perspective, covering both environmental and social factors. Drawing on the findings of his book, “The Sustainable Tall Building: A Design Primer”, published by Taylor and Francis, he highlights the architectural ideas, engineering strategies and cutting-edge technologies available to improve the performance of tall buildings in the future.
The presentation provides insight into designing social spaces at height, zero carbon towers, appropriate façade design, Passivhaus thinking, tall timber and low-carbon structures and renovation opportunities.
Australia has signed on to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, committing to keep global warming to below 1.5C to 2C. The buildings industry has made a lot of progress in understanding the solutions for operational energy, and inevitably the proportion of impacts that is from embodied energy is increasing.
One of the outcomes of the GBCA roadmap to achieving this goal is to adopt zero carbon materials, products and services. The highest proportion of embodied energy is typically found in structural materials specified by the Structural Engineer.
To take this next step forward, Sustainability Consultants can benefit from understanding the Engineer’s options to ask the right questions and influence better outcomes.
Adam Jones, Future Green Leader for 2019, is a Structural Engineer passionate about design for reducing embodied energy and have lead the webinar on:
- Trends of operational vs embodied energy
- Influencing Structural Engineer’s culture
- Efficient design
- Solutions with concrete
- Solutions with steel
- Design for adaptability and resilience
- Reuse of existing buildings
- Solutions with timber
Calculating Cool is a free online rating tool to benchmark performance against best practice to help improve the design, installation and operation of HVAC systems. It provides quantitative and qualitative ratings for Base Building HVAC systems in Australian office buildings with more than 2,000 m2 NLA. It is currently being considered for inclusion in the Performance rating tool.
Calculating Cool has been developed in collaboration with industry bodies including
- the Australian Institute of Refrigeration,
- Air-conditioning and Heating (AIRAH),
- the Property Council of Australia (PCA),
- the Facilities Management Association of Australia (FMAA), and
- the Air-conditioning and Mechanical Contractors’ Association (AMCA).
The project was managed by Sustainability Victoria (SV) on behalf of the Council of Australian Government (COAG) Commercial Buildings Committee with joint funding from the Commonwealth, States and Territories, and delivered by Team Catalyst.
Calculating Cool can be accessed at www.calculatingcool.com.au
PC Thomas will introduce you to the tool and take you through a live practice: Introduction to Calculating Cool Presentation of a case study building example and it’s HVAC system Application of the online rating system using the above example Q&A session.
What is passive house? And what impacts can it have?
During this webinar, learn the latest from a leading expert in passive house with an opportunity for live Q&A with the presenter Andy Marlow, an accomplished architect and a Director at Australian Passive House Association.
Key learning areas include:
- High Performance Windows: How low-emissivity double or triple glazing with thermally broken or non-metal frames can allow solar radiation to penetrate during the winter months (free heating!) but limit during the summer.
- Thermal Insulation: Sufficient insulation is what’s needed within the building’s envelope, providing enough thermal separation between the inside environment and the outdoors.
- Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery: How ventilation recovers heat and cool that would otherwise be wasted whilst also filtering the air that’s coming into the building.
- Airtightness: Ensuring there are only a very limited amount of gaps and cracks within your envelope, giving you full control over your internal environment
- Thermal Bridge Free Construction: using materials that are less conductive to heat (i.e. timber in place of metal) and/or incorporating thermal breaks.
The term ‘biophilic design’ is being both increasingly used and increasingly misunderstood. In this webinar, Stephen Choi will take you through an introduction to biophilic design, including identification of the patterns and elements that can be incorporated into a project and how they impact both end-users and the project teams. He shares examples of how biophilic design has been successfully applied in projects around the world.
The move towards more energy efficient and tighter buildings might lead to increased consumer exposure to the thousands of chemicals embedded in building materials.
This seminar will present new high throughput methods to characterize the population exposure to tens of thousands chemical-product combinations used in building materials and cleaning products, using method of lines and other modeling approaches.
We demonstrate the application of these tools via a comparison of potential human health impacts associated with different alternatives to phthalates (DEHP) as plasticizer in vinyl flooring over its life cycle.
We will also shortly look at an advanced tool presently developed for modelling both chemicals mass balance and energy balance, and how it can inform building and ventilation design and strategies.
We finally discuss how this works, and provide a scientific basis for the international management of chemical in products in a life cycle perspective, in the frame of the UN environment Global Chemical Outlook II.
There is growing evidence that facility cleaning services can have a big impact on a building’s air quality, and occupant wellbeing. The implementation of green cleaning protocols can directly help your organisation achieve up to four Green Star Performance credits, and improve your landfill and energy targets. Yet the challenge of engaging with contracted services and an after-hours workforce, means that many opportunities for training, measuring and improving performance are lost.
In this 45 minutes webinar, Bridget will explain how to influence existing contractor agreements and embed stronger controls into future procurement process.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand which cleaning service requirements can directly and indirectly help your organisation to achieve Green Star Performance credits.
- Learn how to identify the leverage points within existing cleaning contracts and how to use them to engage with after-hours cleaning personnel and managers. Receive a practical guide to the five key aspects of the procurement process necessary for building stronger and more measurable future agreements.
About the presenter: Bridget Gardner is considered the Australian authority on sustainable cleaning practices. She was the technical expert in cleaning during the development of Green Star-Performance, a Director on the former Construction and Property Sector Industry Skills Council (CPSISC), and is a frequent contributor to industry journals. As Director of Fresh Green Clean, Bridget has provided training, auditing and contract documentation since 2006, and has worked in the cleaning industry for 17 years. She is skilled at researching and translating complex information into practical and actionable information, is a qualified trainer and facilitator and an experienced and dynamic presenter.
Learning from those already excelling in our industry is a great way to gain valuable insights for your own career. Whether just starting out or a few years into the industry, knowing which path to take and the direction different career moves may lead to is often a challenge.
Join this webinar to learn from three exciting industry professionals. Each has taken a very different path to their current role and look forward to sharing their journey. Bring your questions to them and gain tips and inspiration for your own career decisions.
Speakers include:
- Matt Williams, Principal, ESD, LCI Consultants
- Janaki Dhagat, Sustainability Manager, Charter Hall
- Karen Greaves, Sustainability Manager – QLD and Yarrabilba Development, Lendlease
- Nick Baker, Green Star Special Projects Lead, GBCA