Our Approach

Environment & climate change strategy

This past year we have significantly enhanced our internal capacity to efficiently manage our environmental performance and our preparedness for climate change.

During the year we have focused on further integrating responsibility for sustainability into our business operations. This increases our opportunity to create synergies in every day activities and improve our environmental responsibility, by promoting active ownership of sustainability at all levels of our business.

We have also put in place measures to better align our data capture to meet the increasing level of statutory and voluntary reporting and provide a more robust resource management approach, while minimising the significant management time and effort associated with external reporting. The factors driving resource consumption reporting are shown below (see above diagram).

Ultimately these improvements will enable us to better identify and respond to the impacts of climate change through greater accuracy in data and trend analysis.

In 2008, we identified a number of areas in which we can mitigate our impact on climate change and minimise our overall environmental footprint. We have outlined our progress against these key areas over the last 12 months as follows:

1. Energy management

We have completed the implementation of a resource consumption database to track month by month resource consumption for every property under our operational control. We are utilising an external web based system and have completed full resource consumption history for the last two years.

In addition, we have access to data for electricity, gas and water usage, which provides real time monitoring. This has enabled anomalies in resource consumption profiles to be identified and addressed.

2. Building controls

We have completed a review of building control systems across our office portfolio. This program identified a number of areas for improvement in building management. Detail on the success of this program can be found under the Building Controls Project case study here.

3. Low emissions energy solutions

Alternative energy strategies such as co-generation and tri-generation systems can assist in reducing a building’s carbon footprint. We are incorporating these low emissions energy solutions into our new developments at 1 Bligh Street, Sydney and 123 Albert Street, Brisbane.

During the year, we undertook a study into the incorporation of co-generation systems at one of our existing and fully tenanted properties. The results of the study showed constraints around feasibility and operational risk factors which can be common challenges in retro fitting projects in existing properties.

We expect the initiatives underway in our current development projects will provide greater insight into managing the challenges associated with retro fitting co-generation.

4. Water

During the year we also completed a review of our office portfolio incorporating simple water saving measures wherever possible. These measures include cooling tower maintenance programs, leak detection, dual flush toilets, low or waterless urinals, flow restrictors and water saving showerheads.

We have committed to ultra low flow toilet and urinal systems in all upgrades and are currently exploring a number of innovative water reuse opportunities in our office portfolio such as capturing fire system testing water.

The improved use of our real time monitoring systems will assist in delivering greater water savings and we are exploring strengthened performance criteria in our service contracts to further minimise water use.

5. Waste

During the year, we completed a review of our waste management processes across our office portfolio and developed a best practice guideline for our property management teams. This information is being used to amend waste management contracts to streamline our recycling process and maximise the amount of waste diversion from landfill. In addition, we are incorporating the improvement of waste and recycling data as a performance measure in our waste management contracts.