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SPORTS STADIUMS
Metricon Stadium: House of the Rising Suns Adelaide Oval and the Stadiums of the Future Battle of the Buldge: Sustainable Planning for a Bigger Australia
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contents
VOLUME 15
Feature Project Profiles:
4
Kicking Off: Adelaide Oval and the Stadiums of the Future
8
House of the Rising Suns: Metricon Stadium
4
Feature SUPPLEMENTs
18 The Future of Project Management 22 Sustainable Planning for a Bigger Australia 24 Counting the Cost: Costing Technologies
22
MARKET Analysis 28 State Analysis: Sport Stadiums
PROFESSIONAL Columns 12 Technology Column: Stadium Geometry Harmonises With Dublin Cityscape
14
Accessibility Column: Access All Areas: Stadiums and Assembly Areas
34
Sustainability Column: Living Smarter Within Bigger Cities
36
OHS Column: Safety in Design
37
Glass Column: Latest in Windows
38 Legal Column: Beware of Greenwash Marketing
ASSOCIATION MATTERS 16 Green Market needs Industrial-Strength shift 32
Sports Stadia Lean On Precast
editorial advisors and supporters
Publisher | Brandon Vigon 03 8844 5822 ext. 112 publisher@awardmagazine.com.au Editor | Mark Kenfield editor@awardmagazine.com.au Contributing Writers | Andrew Aitken, Andrew Angelides, Anne-Marie Byrne, Sarah Bachmann, Stephanie Bray, Jim Doyle, Cameron Hook, Dr. Ong Boon Lay, Rob Malkin, Angus W. Stocking, Jeff Salton, Kayt Watts, George Xinos. Designer | Tushar Bhatnagar
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MediaEDGE Communication Australia PO Box 6257 Chapel Street North South Yarra, VIC 3141 T: 03 8844 5822 F: 03 9824 1188 www.awardmagazine.com.au President | Kevin Brown Š Copyright 2011 Australia Post Publications Mail Pub. No. PP381712102392
|3 Cover Image: courtesy of Cox Architecture in association with Walter Brooke & Hames Sharley
SPOTLIGHT: Adelaide Oval
Kicking Off: Adelaide Oval and the Stadiums of the Future
By Mark Kenfield
There are times at which this Digital Age we live in, for all its connections and connectivity, can seem a little disconnected. People sit around tables playing with their phones, home theatres keep us in the living room instead of the cinema, and our work lives seem to include inordinate amounts of time spent interacting with computers rather than people. In short, it is becoming increasingly easy for us to engage in society without engaging much at all. 4 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
All of which has more traditional entertainments; movies, theatre and even sports; now vying with people’s homes, and even their phones, for attention and attendance. This does make things harder for these more traditional types of entertainment, but at the same time – it
brings all of us the benefits of those entertainments being forced to up their game. Which brings recently approved redevelopment.
us to the Adelaide Oval
Disadvantaged by stadium deals
Renders courtesy of Cox Architecture in association with Walter Brooke and Hames Sharley
But in light of the historical, cultural and geographical significance of Adelaide Oval to the city of Adelaide itself, the South Australian government has now committed $535 million to a proposed redevelopment of Adelaide Oval; designed by Cox Architecture, with Walter Brooke and Associates and Hames Sharley and project managers Mott Macdonald; that is expected to put the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide Power up to $8 million a year better off should they move to the inner-city venue. So how do you approach the
redevelopment of an icon? Adelaide Oval has hosted the highest levels of both cricket and football for over a century, but with the changing nature and demands of professional sport in Australia, the need for highend technologies and multi-sport capabilities within a single stadium is greater than ever before. “Single purpose stadiums are harder to make work in the long run,” explains Cox’s Patrick Ness, Design Director for the project, “so we’re seeing an increasing trend around the world for the development of multi-purpose stadiums”. “The idea of cricket and football coming together to share facilities and use Adelaide Oval during different seasons makes good design sense;
The redeveloped stadium will be able to house up to 50,000 spectators
it’s a much more practical and clever way to approach use of the stadium. It also creates significant efficiencies and greater brand leverage” he adds.
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at AAMI Stadium and suffering from dwindling attendances at the existing ground; both of South Australia’s AFL clubs suffered financial losses in the past year, which saw them ranked 15th and 16th in stadium yields for 2010.
MAIN:
Design Intents
Undertaken in the latter half of last year with the South Australian Cricket Association, the initial design work for the redevelopment has been an extensive process. The brief being to develop a 50,000 seat stadium, with a very strong visual identity, that has three pavilions and retains the original stadium’s heritage-listed scoreboard and the oval’s northern mound – which will open the stadium up to the surrounding parklands, and create a public festival plaza that will face back towards the city. The ‘user experience’ has formed the centre of the project’s design |5
SPOTLIGHT: Adelaide Oval TOP:
The new stadium will feature highend corporate and hospitality facilities.
BOTTOM: The open and spacious design of the stadium’s interior will help create a visual link to the surrounding parklands, and create a stronger visual connection to the city of Adelaide itself.
intent, which focuses on three core user groups: the spectators who will come to the ground; the teams and players who will influence the success of the project; and the management teams responsible for coordinating the matches and events that will be held there.
“We often say that we’re competing against TV, so we need to do everything we can to draw people away from their lounge rooms and provide them with an event that’s compelling for a whole host of reasons – there has to be more than just a good game to watch” he adds. “From the perspective of the players, our objective is to achieve the best facilities in all areas, from the playing surface, training facilities and change room facilities to the lighting and team branding. The intent behind this is all about enhancing the game – whatever the sport – so that teams continue to go further and faster and become more forward looking in terms of their development. And from a management perspective, we’re designing a stadium that has been thought through at a management level to ensure it provides ease of use, flexibility and system efficiency for the delivery of the product – both in the short and long term”.
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Technology
Technology will form a fundamental component of the new
6 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
“This concept of the new stadium providing a technologically advanced platform that can be varied to suit different teams is the single most exciting development in stadiums at the moment, possibly in the entire southern hemisphere” he adds. A comprehensive online parking management system will be another of the most important aspects of the new stadium from a technological perspective. “We’re looking at a whole range of technological initiatives including smart phone ticketing systems and the provision of important information associated with the event via text messaging – such as where to park, what routes to take to avoid traffic
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“From a spectator point-of-view, the intent is to achieve a new generation in stadium design with excellent viewing comfort and close proximity to the play complemented by quality food, beverage and entertainment facilities” Ness says.
stadium. “One of the most exciting and innovative developments with the redevelopment will be the ability for technology to brand the stadium between the different home teams through lighting design and LED screens, which will create lighting overlays to help provide a strong home team advantage, whether it be the Crows, the Redbacks or Cricket Australia who are using the stadium” explains Cox’s Project Director Alastair Richardson.
congestion as well as details about half time entertainment and more” explains Mott Macdonald’s David Johnson, the Project Manager. Additional plans include making WI-FI available to spectators throughout the ground, with all of these technological initiatives geared towards catering for the demands and expectations of the next generation of spectators – who place a particular premium on convenience and ease of use.
A Goal for Adelaide Itself
Beyond achieving the best result possible for the three core user groups of the stadium, the redevelopment is also of broader importance to the city of Adelaide itself. “The redevelopment project is part of a broader plan by the South Australian State Government to revitalise the entire riverbank precinct – one of the city’s most significant urban renewal initiatives” Johnson says. “The Oval is therefore part of an overall plan which will not only achieve better integration with the city, but will also provide a host of other benefits and improved facilities for users of the entire area” he concludes. The project team is currently looking to complete portions of the stadium for the next Ashes tour in 2013, with practical completion expected in 2014.
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|7
SPOTLIGHT: Metricon Stadium
House of the Rising Suns: Metricon Stadium By Mark Kenfield
And although the basic concept of tiered seating surrounding a playing field hasn’t changed in all this time, their design and construction has most certainly evolved. Which brings us to Australia’s newest AFL stadium, Metricon Stadium, a $144.2 million redevelopment of Queensland’s old Carrara Stadium which is not only home to the newlyformed Gold Coast Suns, it’s powered by the sun. Metricon
raises
the
8 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
interesting
question of how you go about creating one of the most advanced stadiums in the country with limited time and budget? “We were asked to produce a costeffective regional stadium for 25,000 people” explains Project Principal Chris Paterson of Populous Architects, who worked closely with builders Watpac on the project. “It had to include the best possible amenities for corporate spectators, but also needed to be flexible enough to cater for the cricket, and for the Gold Coast’s bids for the
2018 Commonwealth Games and the FIFA World Cup.
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Stadiums have defined the way we watch large sporting events for thousands of years. They are places of dreams, spectacular hubs of human emotion, aspiration and activity, and they have played host to some of the greatest feats of physical achievement ever witnessed.
It’s all Atmosphere
About
the
All that remains of the original Carrara stadium are the six light towers, everything else was demolished. The original plans for the redevelopment included two main grandstands on either side of the oval, with uncovered seating behind both goals, however additional funding allowed the stadium’s roof to be extended around the southern end of stands as well. One of the old stadium’s most popular features was the festivallike atmosphere it had, and the new stadium has strived to replicate this through features such as keeping all of the food and beverage units out in the plaza to activate and invigorate that space. Being a smaller stadium offered
Photos courtesy of MakMax
The stadium’s distinctive wave-shaped fabric roof creates a unique identity for the new stadium, whilst also offering considerable sustainability credentials – including photovoltaic panels and rainwater harvesting abilities.
Other features include new corporate hospitality options that replace traditional banquet tables; stylish suites and lounges, with informal seating and coffee tables to create a more relaxed ‘watching from home’ atmosphere; open corporate barbecue terraces that offer a more relaxed corporate environment; and the Coaches’ Field Club, which offers a completely new concept in fan immersion, “With the Coaches’ Field Club members are fully immersed in the game,” Paterson
explains, “they have direct viewing access into the club’s warm-up areas, and can even high-five the players as they run out onto the pitch”.
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the redevelopment some additional benefits as well, “We’ve managed to achieve the best sight lines of any AFL stadium in the country” Paterson explains, “In terms of how close spectators can get to the ground, the rake of the tiers, and the lack of any obstructed views, we’ve managed to provide a terrific spectator experience – which is something you can really achieve well in a smaller stadium”.
Riding the Waves
Without a doubt, the stadium’s most distinctive feature is its waveshaped fabric roof, which integrates extensive photovoltaic (PV) panelling into its construction – the first roof of its kind in Australia. “Our biggest challenge was finding a balance between aesthetics and functionality for the fabric structure details” explains Tensys Director Peter Lim, who provided the structural design and detailing for the fabric roof. “With fabric structures all of the connection details are exposed, so we developed a special fabric/membrane gutter and sump system, which created a more monocoque form. This provided
the roof with a more seamless and attractive form” Lim says. “The design of the roof, achieves benchmark steel weights for a roof of its kind (approximately 40kg/m2)” adds Arup Senior Associate Josh Neil, “We achieved this through our unique understanding of both lightweight and long-spanning roof structures as well as our ability to understand and incorporate tension membrane design into our early analysis”. “I think the most impressive aspect of the roof would be the wave effect of the rear edge” says Nick Webb, Project Manager for MakMax, who provided the stadium’s 16,600m2 of PFTE-coated high translucency glass fibre fabric roofing. “The highly curved shape is impressive for a stadium roof of this size and adds a point of difference to the overall look of the venue. The flexibility of fabric as a building material is clearly visible in the apparent ease in which |9
SPOTLIGHT: Metricon Stadium
these curved shapes are achieved”.
“Another impressive addition has been the solution to drain the water from the 14,000m2 roof” Webb adds. “Because PTFE fabric is such a flexible medium to work with both physically and in relation to the design constraints of the stadium; we were able to design a steep reverse cone within the membrane panel, which acts as a water catchment channelling all water into the siphonic drainage system”. This water is then harvested for re-use throughout the stadium. Structurally, the biggest concern and component of a fabric roof structure such as Metricon’s is wind. “These roofs are very light and therefore wind loads are the dominant structural forces affecting them” explains Lim, “So both the fabric membrane itself and the structural details supporting it, had to be designed to resist the full impact of the 50 year return period winds”.
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Catching Some Rays
The stadium’s ‘Solar Halo’, which lines the inside edge of the roof, also played a particularly pivotal role in its design. “Because the stadium is a public space we wanted the roof to be highly visible” Paterson says. “We
“The government now has a 20% renewable energy target for its new buildings,” he adds, “so we were absolutely adamant that whatever we put in had to generate at least 20% of the stadium’s power.” Engineering services for the project’s solar power system were provided by Norman Disney & Young (NDY); and included PV panelling that is 5 metres wide, and is installed over 450 metres of roofing. The system will generate approximately 275 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity each year. Which will account for 20% of the stadium’s predicted energy usage. The stadium’s solar panelling uses Scheuten Optisol sandwich glass panels, which provide excellent visibility from below, and have cell spacing that has been designed to ensure sufficient light passes through the panels to prevent a solid shadowline on the field - a key consideration for the design team. “Integration of the solar panels into the existing roof design proved to be an interesting task for the team,” explains NDY Environmentally Sustainable Design Manager, Connan Brown, “a number of options were investigated. The initial option was to mount the panels almost flat with a uniform leading edge and having the panels sloping down slightly towards the rear of the stands to capture the stormwater. However the final solution involved 39 individual bays, each comprising 8, 14 or 18 solar panels mounted over a curved bay. Viewed from the front, these bays present as a series of curved elements, with each panel sloping to the side and backwards to allow for rainwater
harvesting”. Because of the horseshoe-shaped roof, each bay presents at a different azimuth or orientation to the sun. On top of that, the individual panels that make up each bay also present at a range of different inclinations to the sun. This complex geometry made the assessment of the roof’s power generation particularly timeconsuming, however it was eventually demonstrated that the electrical power generation would not be adversely impacted by the curved form, and the decision was made to proceed with the solar halo. “A detailed investigation showed that the potential generation of the curved solar roof was 1–2% less than an almost-flat design,” Brown says, “however the curved design offers improved angles for self-cleaning for the majority of panels, which puts the curved roof on par with, or marginally better, than a flatter design in terms of overall generation efficiency”.
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“The installation of the fabric roof was our biggest challenge” adds Webb, “I had to devise an installation methodology that was both safe and practical, so we constructed purposebuilt work platforms that were secured to the steel trusses. These work platforms were used at each panel location, providing workers with a safe place to harness themselves. Great consideration was taken in designing the methodology, and we conducted a number of presentations to Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and our client Watpac due to the high risk working environment”.
didn’t want to hide it; we wanted it to be educational. We wanted people coming into the stadium to see and acknowledge its presence, to make it a talking point, and hopefully encourage greater use of solar power”.
Play On
All of which means that with Metricon Stadium, we now have a new benchmark for the effectiveness and efficiency of stadium design and delivery in Australia. The project faced significant challenges in meeting both a strict budget and even stricter program of works, taking only 350 days to build. According to Paterson, bringing the project in on its tight budget came about through large numbers of meetings and through interrogating clients and consultants. “It forced us to really question every element of the design” he says, “and that allowed us to strip away any excess”. The equally tight program of works was achieved through very good relationships across all of the contractors, consultants and stakeholders. Having a cohesive team made all the difference in maximising efficiencies in the design and construction. “We’re very proud of the end result,” concludes Paterson. “We believe it sets a new benchmark in regional stadiums, whilst still retaining the festive atmosphere of the old stadium. It’s a fun stadium, and it really feels like it’s a part of the gold coast”. All of which suggests a sunny future, for the house of the rising Suns.
10 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
The stadium’s ‘solar halo’ will provide 275 megawatt hours of electricity per year - around 20% of the stadium’s energy needs.
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TECHNOLOGY column
Stadium Geometry Harmonises With Dublin Cityscape The stadium with the world’s oldest rugby pitch, Lansdowne Road Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, is being retired and replaced by the 400 million euro Aviva Stadium scheduled for completion in 2010. The new stadium will be home to both the Irish rugby and soccer international teams and will play host to the Europa League final in 2011. While this will be the first time a Europa League final has ever been held in Ireland, the old stadium hosted many European Championship (UEFA) and World Cup (FIFA) matches over the last 25 years.
phases of the project,” explains Populous Senior Architect David Hines. With such emphasis placed on maintaining the purity of the original concept, functional considerations were made to serve the building’s form. This meant that the skin’s basic geometry had to be coded into design processes from the beginning of the project.
Designed by Populous, a leading sports architecture firm formerly known as HOK Sport Venue Event, together with local architects Scott Tallon Walker, Aviva Stadium has 50,000 seats in four tiers, all with excellent views thanks to extensive modeling work. The seating is sheltered by a sinuous form that combines roof and façade in one shimmering, organic shell.
The project's structural engineering was provided by Buro Happold, who collaborated on the critically important geometric issues of the structure and architecture, and whose solutions were part of the fundamental design goal. During the design GenerativeComponents software emerged as an important facilitating tool. “Certain variables and base principles were established within the GenerativeComponents model, allowing Populous to maintain control over the final form of the model” Hines says. “This allowed the model to be parametric
“Our main challenge was to ensure that the unified form of the building’s concept was maintained from the design and development through to construction 12 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
- having internally defined variables and also constrained the geometry to certain grids and base extremities. For Populous, this was the most critical single aspect of the parametric design, as the finished construction derived directly from the shape of the parametric skin of the building.” As the stadium’s structural underpinnings and functional details were finalised, the mesh underlying the roof and façade could be reorganised as needed, without changing the shape that the mesh assumed. Eventually, information from this model was exported to multiple Excel spreadsheets that listed the size, shape, structural member index, and placement details of each translucent panel used in the exterior cladding. These panels could then be manufactured off site and shipped to contractors as needed. “There is no doubt that the whole process
LEFT:
The complex design of the stadium’s mesh skin was greatly aid by the use of parametric modelling.
RIGHT: The redeveloped stadium will house up to 50,000 spectators.
could have been done in a nonparametric model and developed through extensive redrawing and remodeling of forms and geometry,” Hines says. “But given the complexity of the design in hand and the numerous elements that were coordinated across different offices, following a non-parametric approach to this design would have allowed room for numeric errors", which he says are dealt with through computing because they would take an utterly unfeasible length of time if handled conventionally. Hines admits that developing the initial parametric model takes quite a long time compared to traditional methods but says the effort pays off dramatically. “Using parametric design allows designers to quickly assess schemes and layouts over complex forms in shorter amounts of time in order to get to the desired solution faster while eliminating basic human error” he says 'The model can compute numerous calculations over a vast number of elements”. In addition to serving as spec sheets for panel manufacturers and others, Excel spreadsheets based on the software proved to be an excellent way to communicate with Buro Happold on structural issues. Teams from both firms worked together to establish the principles governing the relationship between the skin and structural roof members. “We needed to develop a framework by which the information between both forms could be translated, with Populous ultimately driving the form and cladding of the building and Buro Happold
driving the sizing and positioning of the structural members” says Hines. To do this efficiently, the Populous team created a simplified script in the software that would produce the stadium skin based on setout figures from an Excel spreadsheet. “That way, Populous and Buro Happold could work simultaneously on the model at different offices, with Buro Happold further developing the structural members on top of the same file, and Populous further developing the cladding layout on top of the original file” he adds. With the underlying frames to both firms’ models being dependent on the base figures within the Excel document, ultimately Populous could amend and refine the skin’s forms by altering the established variable figures within Excel. Coordination between the two firms relied on the transfer of a single Excel file. Aviva Stadium is owned by the Irish Rugby Football Union and the Football Association of Ireland, and both organisations are trying to be good neighbors on Lansdowne Road. At the north end of the stadium, for example, there is just one tier of seats, not four, in order to lessen the impact on nearby homes. Close attention was paid to acoustic properties, so noise from events will be largely confined to stadium grounds. Similarly, local roadways and the Lansdowne Road train station were renovated to smoothly accommodate traffic without unnecessary congestion. Several visualisation programs were used to render the MicroStation model
into 3D displays, which helped the development team and community organisers communicate their concerns about accessibility. Aviva Stadium also features several green initiatives. The remarkable roof and façade shell minimise environmental impact by collecting rain water, which is stored and used later for watering the pitch. Other green design elements include low environmental impact concrete, intelligent controls for escalators, and low-energy lighting. The bar has been raised for largescale sport venues. Communities now demand attractive, high-performance buildings that have minimal impact on the environment. The Aviva Stadium should deliver an innovative architectural form that is in harmony with the surrounding cityscape. The union of form and function in the design demonstrates the power of software solutions to "give architects and engineers the ability to deliver complex and beautiful stadiums within the given time frame and budget” Hines concludes. In the case of Aviva, software has been used for rapid prototyping of the stadium's sophisticated design, whilst delivering a thoroughly modern, highly sustainable structure.
By Angus W. Stocking, L.S. | 13
ACCESSIBILITY column
Access for All: Stadiums & Assembly Areas Sporting facilities, stadia and assembly areas are important social environments where equitable access is vital to promoting and maintaining social inclusion. They provide an opportunity for people to view and better understand the narrative of other people while also providing a medium to express their own narrative to society. In 2011, where new facilities and stadia are being constructed at a rapid pace to keep up with growing populations, ensuring equitable access for those with vision, hearing or mobility-impairment is a key consideration from initial project design.
PARTICIPANTS AS SPECTATORS Here in Australia, the Disability (Access to Premises – Buildings) Standard and its Access Code have introduced significant changes to access guidelines for many types of buildings, including facilities, stadia and assembly areas. The requirements for spaces allocated to people that use wheelchairs have increased in size and frequency, meaning more wheelchair spaces are now required and should be grouped to ensure both single and groups of spaces are provided for patrons in wheelchairs who attend with others who may or may not require the use of a mobility aid. Also of significance to designers and architects is the requirement to locate wheelchair seating so it is representative of overall seating available. Providing such seating at different tiers and at differing levels certainly poses challenges with regard to the design and provision of vertical transport as well as accessible paths of travel to and from entry points for such transport. Fortunately, however, such requirements can be successfully addressed when considered earlier in the design process. Access options for people who have guide dogs to assist them with their 14 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
mobility are often still overlooked early on in a project’s design phase. Other international standards which include particular seating requirements to accommodate guide dogs — usually the space occupied by approximately one-and-a-half standard seats — could be successfully implemented in Australia. The introduction of such seating requirements would better serve this small but important part of our community and, from a legal standpoint, reduce for owners and managers of such facilities complaints in line with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). Further, hearing augmentation systems are essential to ensure patrons with hearing impairments can participate as spectators at sporting facilities and stadia. These systems can take the form of an induction loop or a receiver system which communicates audible information via infrared or radio wave signals. Induction loops allow people with hearing impairments to use their hearing aids to gain an amplified signal of any audible information being conveyed via an amplified announcement system. While the use of such loops is often successfully introduced in assembly areas such as cinemas and theatres, their use in major sporting facilities and stadia is often impractical. Receiver systems, meanwhile, generally involve the collection of a receiver from a central location within the facility which has a headphone assembly allowing the user to modulate the volume most suitable to their hearing. These provide greater scope for use by a wider range of people (such as the elderly) who may not have a pronounced hearing impairment but who do experience some hearing loss. One ongoing source of difficulty in their use, however, is in environments where appropriate resources are not allocated to support their use, ongo-
ing charging and maintenance. The amount of receivers provided for such a receiver system has also increased in the latest Disability (Access to Premises – Buildings) Standard and the Building Code of Australia. Any information desk or ticketing booth which is fitted with a screen should also provide a hearing augmentation listening system. Audio prescription is another available technology which allows people with vision impairments to listen to a description of events occurring on stage during a theatre performance or onscreen during a film. This technology can also be incorporated into the same receiver systems described above.
PARTICIPANTS AS COMPETITORS Access requirements that are considered a matter of course in ‘front of house’ sections of stadiums and assembly areas are sometimes overlooked ‘back of house’. Items such as circulation spaces to doors, the provision of accessible sanitary facilities and showers, the absence of steps and the presence of appropriate clear widths in ‘accessways’ are just as important to ‘back of house’ design consideration as they are for ‘front of house’. Additionally, many facilities and stadia accommodating elite sporting events are often also used as facilities for local sporting teams with mobility, vision or hearing impairments. The positive social effects that stem from providing access to such facilities for these members of our community cannot be underestimated, a point thankfully reinforced by the fact such considerations are being given increasing attention earlier on in the design of such facilities and stadia..
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association matters
Green market needs industrial-strength shift Despite the potential to increase operating efficiencies, cut costs and reduce their environmental footprint, not to mention reduce worker injuries and boost employee satisfaction and performance, the industrial sector has been slow to grasp the opportunities of Green Star. No other type of facility has as much to gain from building green as the industrial sector. Industrial buildings can be heavyduty users of energy, resources and land, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and containing hundreds, sometimes thousands, of employees performing repetitive tasks under often unpleasant conditions. In some cases, the equipment in these facilities consumes vast amounts of water and energy, generates tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and emits noxious fumes. And yet, of the 330 plus Green Star-rated projects, just one is an industrial facility. And while 14 projects are registered to 16 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
achieve Green Star – Industrial ratings, Lot 12 TradeCoast Central remains a solitary green industrial landmark. This is not just an Australian problem. Just one per cent of all buildings rated under the US Green Building Council’s LEED green building rating system are industrial projects. Australia’s industrial processes accounted for 31.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2008. While that’s only 5.4 per cent of the total, it’s still the equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from more than six million passenger vehicles. And don’t forget, that’s before the industrial buildings
themselves are considered; commercial buildings are responsible for around 10 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions. To a large extent, the industrial market is still about tin sheds on concrete slabs. While business owners may recognise the impact their industrial process itself has on the environment, they rarely consider the effect of the building. In not doing so, they are missing out on a massive opportunity. Construction costs on average represent only 11 per cent of the total cost to build, operate and maintain a facility over a typical 40-year lifecycle. Yet decisions made in the construction phase, often based on the lowest bid, can significantly increase operating costs over the life of the building. Minimal increases in upfront costs of about two per cent to support green design result in life cycle savings of, on average, 20 per cent of total construction costs - more than 10 times the initial
sustainability initiatives of its Willawong Bus Depot. The results were so startling that they’ve decided to register two subsequent bus depot projects for Green Star – Industrial ratings. The Council anticipated that that a wellventilated workplace with natural light would lead to better productivity. What the Brisbane City Council didn’t anticipate was the impact daylit facilities would have on lost time due to injury. Better access to natural light and task lighting means people can see more clearly and move around their workplace more safely.
investment, according to a report from California’s Sustainable Building Task Force.
and reduced power required to heat the water leads to a lessened environmental impact.
Industrial facilities often use vast quantities of water – but industrial facilities that are not water-based tend to have few features to reduce water consumption. By introducing simple solutions which reduce reliance on mains water, non-potable water can be used for landscape irrigation, toilet and urinal flushing, custodial purposes and building systems. These measures can save thousands of dollars per year, resulting in rapid payback on water conservation infrastructure.
The project has also invested in a shared, precinct non-potable water storage and distribution system, which gained them a Green Star innovation point for environmental design initiatives. The system reduces potable water consumption by 80 per cent – the equivalent of more than 10,000 litres a day - and the only potable water used within the precinct is for kitchens, showers and hand basins. Non-potable water is sourced from local council water treatment plants, which guarantee a weekly supply of 2,800 kilolitres.
At Brisbane’s Eagle Farm, the Green Star-rated Lot 12 TradeCoast Central has integrated a range of water-wise measures. Smart fittings and fixtures include the ‘Showerguard’ system, which restricts the flow of hot water, has the potential to save many thousands of litres of water every year, when compared to non-efficient shower heads. The combined benefits of less waste water
The human capital benefits of Green Star-rated industrial facilities can be even more spectacular. A raft of international research confirms that comfortable, well-lit facilities promote alertness and motivation. Brisbane City Council used the Green Star – Industrial tool to inform the
So, why aren’t more industrial facilities going green? Cost is certainly still an issue. The scale of these buildings makes them expensive and owners of industrial facilities often don’t want to invest additional capital to achieve a Green Star rating. However, it is worth noting that Green Star certification is not always the best early indicator of market shift. The Green Star – Industrial tool is downloaded around 1,500 times each year - a sign that the industry is using it. It’s also important that owners of industrial facilities understand that the extra invested capital can realise great returns. In the office market today, developers often assess the return on investment for each Green Star credit; this enables them to make a sound financial decision on their Green Star ratings. We encourage developers of industrial facilities to take the same approach.
By Andrew Aitken Green Star Executive Director Green Building Council of Australia | 17
Supplement: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
The Future of Project Management By Mark Kenfield
According to many industry indicators, Australian construction is essentially a flat market at the moment, with effectively 0% growth across the industry as a whole. With the exception of mining and miningrelated industries, the majority of our commercial and industrial market has not returned to pre-GFC levels. Indeed the buoyancy in Australia’s resources sector; along with a few largescale, government-funded infrastructure projects and some multi-residential developments; is just about only thing keeping the total value of Australia’s construction activity constant at the moment, it masks the fact that much of the industry isn’t just flat, it’s recessed. When you add the strength of the Aussie dollar (and its impacts on exports) to this slump, along with recent natural disasters in Queensland and northern NSW. You can start to get a sense for just how tenuous our current economic 18 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
climate is. It forces all of us to consider how and where we can maximise efficiencies in our own businesses, and it demands immediate action. Obviously there are only so many ways that different areas of the industry can respond to these changed (and changing) market conditions, but some are certainly responding better than others, and their responses offer the potential to teach us all a little something. Project Management is one such area.
“Restricted access to capital and the low appetite for speculative investment has had an obvious knock-on effect across all areas of the construction industry and this has also affected Project Management” explains Brendan Smith, General Manager of Meinhardt’s Project Management Team. “Fees are now very competitive in a market with fewer opportunities available” he says, “And in this climate, good quality Project Managers must be able to stand out from the competition. You must be client focused, you must be able to understand your client’s business drivers and you must be able to add value to the process”. “There is an argument to say that the current economic climate is actually affecting the project management industry in a very positive way” adds Dr. Keith O’Shea, Director of QTC Consulting. “As organisations are realising the benefits of initialising project management in order to maximise their returns and gain maximum productivity
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Supplement: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
from an increasingly shrinking skilled resource pool. It’s an area in which project management can offer real strength”.
Approaching New Market Conditions O’Shea believes that there is actually no shortage of work for skilled consultants at the moment. And says that the key to consultants delivering solutions that will work under the current market conditions, lies in improving the direct link between organisations’ broader strategies and the integration of those strategies into the delivery of their projects. “Despite the GFC and the downturn in the local construction market, our own project management business unit has undergone significant growth over the past five years” says Smith. “We have achieved this through a concerted effort to target high value clients in specialist markets, and through targeting industries that, despite variable economic conditions, must maintain a minimum level of capital expenditure”. Smith says that for private sector clients, value for money is about more than just fees, it is about quality and client relationship management. “Clients will always prefer to do business with someone they trust over a simple cost equation” he says, “Which is not to say that cost isn’t important – fees must still be competitive – but in a constrained market where fees are competitive the only other edge a consultant can have is reputation, pre-existing relationships and quality of services”. This is a viewpoint and an approach that can offer benefits to almost any form of consultancy. It is about focusing on providing specialist services and emphasising the importance of partnerships, client relationship management, collaborative problem solving and customer service – as these are the things that result in repeat business; which is what allows you to tender less and negotiate more. Key to this is developing an organisational structure that can quickly respond to your clients’ specialist needs. You need to be able to allocate the most economical mix of resources – in terms of: skill levels, support structures, technical expertise and management – and you need to be able to allocate them quickly and efficiently. This will allow you offer more competitive fees to your clients. 20 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
Technologies Whilst the rules governing Project Management process and procedure have changed little over the past 20 years, one aspect that has seen significant change has been the technology that surrounds those processes and procedures. Communication and the exchange of information are central to the management process, and today’s technologies have made them both instantaneous and universally accessible. “There are two key pieces of technology that we employ in the delivery of our projects,” Smith says, “and whilst they are not unique, they are crucial to our business”. The first is an on-line communications, procurement and information database; which Smith explains has been developed in response to the need to manage the enormous volume of technical data associated with large national programs, and to help streamline on-line tendering, assessment, and communications. Effective communications and information databases can allow a Project or Program Management team to easily input and extract site information from any location – whether they’re in the office, at home or out in the field. “These Enterprise Project Management tools are what allows us to view all of an organisation's projects in a single space” adds O’Shea, “As such, they’re key to facilitating important strategic decisions, such as where you allocate the resources you have, in order to gain maximum competitive advantage – accepting that you can never undertake all of the projects you would like too, due to limited resources”. Smith says that the second key element of technology that Meinhardt employs is remote communications access (to email and company servers) from laptop computers, mobile phones and tablets. This high level of connectivity is what allows the effective management of projects and programs across large geographical borders, even when they’re on the far side of the planet. “When you are managing projects throughout Australia, or anywhere in the world for that matter, your ability to communicate and access data in the field is what allows you to better manage the distribution of your resources, minimise
the high cost of travel to remote locations, and more readily communicate with your clients” he says. “The key to our success in managing large complex rolling programs is control” he adds, “The greater the level of control we have over a project, the greater surety we have of the outcome for both our business and our client’s business. Having staff out in the field with a high degree of connectivity gives us this control. It means that when a project is not going as planned, we have the ability to personally manage the outcome to quickly get it back on track”.
People Matter “Even though the market is quiet, good Project Managers providing specialist skills will always be in demand” Smith says, “Staff turnover is one of the biggest hidden costs of any business and retaining good staff is fundamental to being able to offer clients competitive, cost-efficient services”. Smith says the solution to this is setting up internal structures to retain good staff. And those structures need to focus on reporting lines, levels of responsibility, career development, work/life balance and remuneration. The result is better consultants, and better consultants are the key to shoring up the client relationships that are so important to any consultancy business in this depressed market. “I think that clients are beginning to understand the difference between a Project Manager that understands their client’s business and adds real value to the management process and those that simply act as a “post boxes” or outsourced resources” Smith says. “Unfortunately some clients do not understand that the difference between these two types of Project Manager can often be price, and as a result you can find yourself competing against very low fees from consultants who are not providing the same level of services as you”. Which is why – in an environment that is as cost-driven as Australia’s construction industry – relationships and reputation are so important – because they can go a long way to overcoming this problem. Addressing these matters of effective technological and staffing structures can help you realise significant efficiencies in your business.
DAVIS LANDON 2 AD TO COME
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Supplement: URBAN PLANNING
Sustainable Planning for a Bigger Australia
By Mark Kenfield
With Australia's population expanding at an extraordinary rate, the question of how we cater for a bigger Australia has jumped to the forefront of the national agenda. The provision of housing – and supporting infrastructure – for this rapidly rising population of ours is of paramount importance; but so too is the need to provide it in an intelligent and sustainable fashion that creates as little additional strain as possible, on our already strained essential infrastructure. So how do we go about this? “The science, engineering and physical arrangement of cities necessary to drive more resilient and sustainable outcomes are well understood” explains Arup Principal Andrew Wisdom, who recently gave a talk on the matter at the Property Council’s ‘Closing the Green Gap’ conference. “The challenge for us is to deliver on this understanding. This throws up a number of issues, from 22 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
the need to understand, think of and deal with the complexity of the urban system; to understanding the nature and location of intervention points in that complex system; to finding ways to work across (mostly historical) organisational boundaries that can get in the way of delivering solutions; to changing aspirations; and so on”. Wisdom notes that green technology is advancing at a relentless pace, but argues that the technology itself is not the major impediment to building our cities more sustainably. “As the benefits of existing technologies such as co-generation, tri-generation, and high-tech waste treatment become better understood; and as information about sustainable practices becomes more pervasively available, the opportunities for doing things better and smarter will increase” he says. Indeed, ignoring the high-end sustainable technologies, some of the most effective sustainable elements that
can be integrated into our buildings are actually the simplest. They include dealing with basic matters of building orientation, material choice, insulation and construction techniques. When you combine these more basics elements with the integration of more technologically advanced measures such as energy generation technologies, low energy appliances, third pipe and water treatment technologies to deal with waste, and smarter management of energy. You can then achieve large material, energy, water and waste benefits without a substantial change in the way you approach things.
Thinking Big When it comes to urban planning in Australia, thinking big is a very new concept. The predominance of detached housing in our country has always lead to an increasing urban sprawl in the past, which has pushed urban boundaries outwards, and has usually been implemented as cost-effectively
as possible (i.e. as cheaply as possible, with the minimum amount of services necessary). Because of this approach, Australian cities have always been built outwards, rather than upwards with medium and high-density developments, and as a result of this, until now we have never had the population density to call for larger, precinct-scale urban planning and sustainable development. Well we do now, and it leaves us with the considerable challenge of having to retroactively approach the precinct-scale sustainable design of our cities. Which raises the interesting question of where we should look to for inspiration. When it comes to large-scale urban planning it’s hard to look past China at the moment. “There is such a huge amount of urban development in China at the moment, that before 2015 they will be building half the world’s new buildings” says Umow Lai Associate Matthew Francis. “That’s a predicted 4,000,000,000 square meters in just the next 5 years”. Given the unprecedented scale of this growth, China’s Vice-Minister for Construction has stated that it is critical for China to minimise the power demand of their new urban developments, and this has led to the establishment of new built environment energy efficiency legislation and several ‘Eco Cities’ across China. Earlier this year the Vice Minister hosted the welcoming ceremony for foreign companies invited to join the newly formed China Green Building Council (of which 5 of the 14 companies were Australian design firms). Francis attended the ceremony and says that this recognition from the highest levels of the Chinese government that urgent effort is needed in fostering collaboration between China and international companies to meet this pending environmental problem is very encouraging.
clear to me that installing the latest and greatest technology in a building doesn't necessarily mean that technology will be running the way you want it to 3-5 years down the track, as adequate maintenance isn’t always performed, and because many facility managers in China aren't educated on high-tech sustainability measures”. “Good green design has to be simple, passive and as maintenance-free as possible” he says.
the city every day, and all of the strains that places on our infrastructure". "We need to understand how to make these distributed solutions financially effective and this may demand changes to our urban form. For example, the financial viability of a co-generation power solution depends on having the right mix and density of use for that area” he says. “We also need to confront regulatory issues and the challenges of adapting our linear systems to work effectively in a distributed environment”.
Given that the urban fabric of Australia’s cities is already firmly established, we aren’t able to take such a ground-up approach to the sustainability of our cities and the precincts within them – but we can certainly learn a great deal from China's commitment to improving their sustainability.
Traffic congestion, fossil fuel consumption and accessibility also play a significant part in achieving more sustainable cities. And effective, largescale public transport is one of the keys to achieving improvements in these aspects of our cities.
“When we compare Finland’s national strategy for sustainable development (2010) with Australia’s (1992) we can detect a significant difference in aspiration” adds Wisdom. “Australia has no national spatial plan that might address the issue of appropriate patterns of settlement. However, we are starting to move on raising aspirations on how we think of and plan our cities, with the recent release of the National Urban Policy; this provides a starting point, but the gap between aspiration and practice remains”.
“Universal accessibility is a key desirable target for our cities that we fall short of now and will find increasingly difficult to achieve if our cities continue to grow” Wisdom says. “The challenge of providing a meaningful public transport service that allows people who live on the urban fringe to get to the places they need to go is immense. When we say public transport, we tend to think of trains or maybe trams, but these are expensive transit options, which makes expanding them particularly hard to justify”.
These appropriate patterns of settlement aren't simply about building high-rise towers everywhere, but rather taking a considered approach to higherdensity living, with measures such as planned medium-density developments that can greatly condense the spread of a higher population (and the infrastructure needed to support it) whilst still avoiding the 'packed-like-sardines' mentality many Australians have towards high-rise housing.
Because of these high costs, when we do commit to building rail-based public transport, we can generally only afford to provide limited extensions to our existing systems. This means that our public transport becomes limited to line haul movement between our city centres and their surrounding suburbs.
Practical Approaches? With both these limitations and these aspirations in mind, we come to the interesting question of what we can do to address the matter here in Australia.
He says that on this scale of construction, the capacity exists to make a substantial difference in the efficiency of the built environment - even just through simple passive design principles such as insulation, double glazing and building orientation.
“I think that the resilience of our cities can be particularly enhanced through the adoption of local and distributed infrastructure solutions, in place of the linear and centralised systems we generally have at the moment” says Wisdom.
“Another important factor to consider is the long-term viability of sustainable building measures” Francis adds. “Having worked in Beijing for many years, it has been made abundantly
"Part of creating this resilience is to generate employment opportunities distributed throughout our cities" he adds, "so that we can reduce our reliance on people commuting into the middle of
“Road-based solutions such as conventional bus and bus rapid transit are therefore inevitable parts of these networks” Wisdom explains, “And finding ways to provide this in cities that continue to get bigger and bigger is a daunting task; but the consequences if we fail to do so are even more daunting”. As a longer term issue, Wisdom concludes that organising our cities so that we can minimise the distances people need to travel is a really important part of improving the efficiency of our cities now and even more-so in the future. Australia is facing a battle of the bulge at the moment. It’s a pivotal battle, and one that will largely decide the future liveability of our nation. However it’s a battle we’ll lose if we don’t sensibly approach the growing issue of sustainability for our larger population. | 23
Supplement: COSTING
Counting the Cost
Costing Technologies
With every aspect of construction costs rising, the need for accurate and efficient costing is more important than ever before, especially in the tighter economic constraints Australia now finds itself in. Which raises the ever-important question of how you manage your costs more efficiently. “Over the past few years, the biggest changes have been in client requirements, which are becoming a lot tighter” explains Pronamics’ Product Specialist Mads Giesenberg, “Clients are 24 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
no longer just asking ‘how much?’, they want to understand costs down to a considerable amount of detail. So you can't just broad-brush anymore, you need to be able to report in detail and identify what resources and end components are being used”. All of which makes having an effective
costing software solution extremely important. “These days, integrated job costing software is designed to deliver your Accounting and Operations teams timely, accurate information on the progress of jobs in useful formats with features including a library of reports or drill-
down inquiries” explains Viewpoint Construction Software’s Jason Burg, “The best solutions allow reports and inquiries to be copied and modified, and new reports to be easily developed”. Any costing software you look at should provide the ability to enter job budgets and change orders directly in the software, or import them from other estimating products. They should also offer the capacity to report and update job progress in units or percentages complete. The software you chose should also offer the benefits of: immediately viewable cost information to ensure that every project is under budget and profitable, fast access to information on the progress of jobs, and real-time cost updates from Payroll, Accounts Payable, Equipment Management and Inventory.
Why Implement Software?
Costing
Being caught off-guard by project costs you weren’t aware of or didn’t plan for is a fairly common issue in construction, the complex nature of project delivery makes sure of that. It also provides a major motivator for people to move to
software solutions for costing. With the increasing complexity of project designs and delivery, contemporary software solutions offer an immediate ability to increase efficiencies, improve financial standing and simplify reporting. “For a lot of people their first real exposure to costing comes in the form of developing spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel – which can be anything from a few simple columns to far more complex workbooks” Giesenberg explains. But as project deliverables become more complex, the potential to spoil something like a formula in Excel, becomes increasingly more problematic. “Using a more structured application, you don't have to worry about things like spreadsheet formulas, which can easily come to grief” Giesenberg says, “They offer you greater security and a greater ability to track specific details across a project. A dedicated software tool allows you to print a report or drill down through it, it's logical it's clear and it's easy to see”. “Construction projects often experience profit fade after it’s too late to turn things around” Burg adds, “Job costing software is designed to provide businesses with
the up-to-the-minute information they need, and to ensure that every project is still under budget and profitable. This allows users to quickly deliver information to managers on the progress of jobs. Job-specific data and reporting features provide clear advantages for eliminating profit fade and help you to stay ahead of surprises on projects in progress”. Developments in these software solutions are constantly ongoing too, which means you can always keep up to date with changing market conditions and stricter reporting requirements, such as the ability to factor-in elements such as carbon debits and credits. “Moving to a software solution allows you to start looking at providing additional costing reports,” Giesenberg explains, “which is vital as reporting requirements become stricter, and work breakdown structures become especially important”. All of which makes costing software a superbly useful tool for project delivery in any and every construction market. And in the currently flat market, any cost efficiencies you can achieve are an advantage.
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INDUSTRY MATTERS
Timber: at the Heart of our Industry
Australia’s construction industry is our largest buyer of timber products, and as such has a huge influence on the types of timber in demand and the ability to help increase the level of sustainable products utilised in Australia. Leading green building standards, codes and regulations from around the world, all specify the use of certified timber in construction and award higher levels or ratings if certified raw material or products, such as PEFC and FSC, are used. Australia which formerly had an exclusive requirement of FSC, has led the way in giving equal recognition to PEFC, including Australian Forestry Standard (AFS), in the GBCA's Timber credit. This has resulted in the Green Buildings Councils (or equivalents) in Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada, US, UK, Netherlands and Singapore following suit. Further incentives for the construction sector and contractors to choose certified timber (and carefully analyse their supply chains) include legislative measures such as the Lacey Act in the United States and the impending EU and Australian legislation banning illegally harvested timber and timber products. Timber is a material that sits at the heart of the construction industry. As well as having the lowest embodied CO2 of any commercially available building material, it is 26 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
increasingly seen as the simple and straightforward way for contractors and clients to achieve a highperformance building solution. With species offering dimensional stability and durability, certified timber has unique sustainability credentials as a renewable building material compared to concrete, steel, brick and block or aluminium. It is critical to prove that the timber used on your project is sustainably sourced and certified. Chain of Custody documentation proves that each step of the supply chain has been monitored closely with independent auditing and is the key mechanism for tracing certified material from the forest to the building site. This unbroken link is transparent proof that the timber used in a project has been sourced from a sustainably managed and certified forest. Timber has amazing appearance, durability and performance values. It is flexible, reliable and fast to work with. It absorbs carbon while growing, uses low energy in conversion, stores carbon in use and is a renewable crop. Timber is also a major part of the offsite construction methodology and is a fully understood way of
achieving greater consistency and quality of design. With many timber components created in a factorycontrolled environment, the building sector can deliver vastly improved levels of project efficiency with low levels of construction waste and faster, safer onsite working practices. This reliability translates into a more stable cost model and predictable timescales, meaning timber can provide smoother project delivery and a quicker return on investment. The our construction industry being the largest buyer of timber products – this means the sector has a huge influence on the type of timber in demand. This means our industry can help increase the level of sustainable products used throughout the country, by demanding certified timber at all times. This helps give a clear market signal that only timber from legal and sustainably managed sources is acceptable. To comply with public sector procurement policy, the use of certified timber is mandatory and certified materials, for example PEFC, including the AFS, are accepted by national public procurement policies worldwide – an essential requirement for public sector projects such as the 2012 London Olympics, which bases its timber procurement policy on the national UK policy..
Kayt Watts CEO,Australian Forestry Standard Limited
Supplement: TeCHNOLOGY
Sports Stadiums of the Future By Rob Malkin
Stadiums of the 21st century are a far cry from those of days gone by. Contemporary stadiums are pushing the boundaries of design, becoming entertainment complexes in their own right where the game is perhaps an afterthought of the overall stadium offer and experience. Modern stadiums are being designed with premium features and services in mind as a means to attract maximum and diverse audiences. These days, stadiums also have to double as entertainment complexes, housing large scale artistic and cultural productions. To this end, modern structures are being modeled on shopping complexes, lounges and even restaurants to meet the needs of corporate hospitality in the current sporting culture. There are a number of factors to be considered in designing modern sports stadiums, ranging from the environmental impact, right through to the need for integrated design teams. As sustainability plays a bigger role in society and indeed design considerations, the importance of an integrated, multi-disciplinary team that is capable of both seeing the big picture and working towards it is of immeasurable value. It is with this in mind that many design firms are turning to the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies to deliver projects that are better designed, cheaper to build and safer. Populous is one such design firm. With multiple complex building projects on the go at any one time, they have to be able to model
designs quickly, create accurate documentation, and collaborate efficiently with other engineering firms and consultants. According to the firm’s associate principal in, Brisbane, Ron van Sluijs, the company’s projects continue to grow in size and complexity. Increasingly, they have been challenged by the sheer number of design and engineering consultants with whom they collaborate. For this reason they required a software solution to allow them to easily integrate diverse work into a single platform that could then be shared with the rest of the project team. BIM technology enables them to do this seamlessly. ANZ Stadium, formerly known as Stadium Australia and the Telstra Stadium was originally designed as part of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The philosophy behind its design was to provide a flexible, multifunctional and economically viable venue with widespread appeal. One of the main design features is the translucent saddle-shaped stadium roof which is 58 meters above the arena and supported by the seating structure. The Stadium was originally built to hold 110,000 making it the largest Olympic stadium ever built and the largest stadium built in Australia. Obviously
such a large scale project required collaboration with a significant sized project team consisting not only of architects and engineers, but contractors, manufacturers and many others. On occasions such as these, it is imperative that information is exchanged easily and designs are shared throughout the project’s lifespan to accelerate review cycles among the members of extended teams. Across the firm’s current projects, Populous is seeing many benefits to the software above and beyond the design phase. During the construction phase, van Sluijs has seen that contractors are really embracing BIM technology for their own scheduling and coordination efforts. By producing 3D computer modelling that brings together each and every component of a major project into a single, visual document, all parties involved in the project are able to visualise the end product, determine how it fits into its local environment and how it will perform over time. The ability to view designs from the same perspective as the architect enables them to better track time to completion, calculate ROI, and gain visibility across portfolios. By adopting 3D technologies such as BIM, design firms are empowered to ensure that the right efficiencies are being deployed and costs are contained across large scale buildings such as sporting stadiums. 3D modelling also allows them to ensure these stadiums make a statement as they can visualise and create fluid design concepts that are also sustainable.
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State Analysis:
Construction Starts By Stephanie Bray BCI Australia
The Australian construction industry is looking grim as growth still eludes the market and talks of a pending recession begin to surface. Construction research firm BCI Australia reported in their June forecaster that the 12 month longterm trend for the market is currently sitting at negative one percent with natural disasters dampening the market. The summer of disasters coupled with uncertainty over the mining tax and carbon tax has some builders apprehensive about the stability of the market. While work in the June quarter is looking positive with more than $17 billion worth of construction commencing, there are mounting concerns there will not be enough private sector work to make up for the void the wind-up of federal government stimulus programs will create in the market over the next few quarters. In the short-term however, BCI Australia expects a 15 percent growth in the national market from the previous quarter, but BCI Research Director, Damian Eastman, warns the growth is not indicative of improvement in the market. “There are a few large projects expected to move into construction over the next three months, which is creating more of a ‘bump’ in construction starts rather than an underlying pick-up in the market,” Mr Eastman said. Mr Eastman said the overall top performing sectors nationally during the third quarter will be the commercial sector and the residential sector. “The community/health sector is also expected to spike in activity during the quarter but this is purely related to the start of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital,” he said. 28 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
NEW SOUTH WALES/ AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY After a poor performing start to the year the New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory sector will win big in the third quarter with a 29 percent increase in construction from the previous quarter. All major sectors are expected to perform well in the coming months, but it is the community and commercial sectors that are anticipated to shine. Both sectors are tipped to show more than 200 percent growth during the coming months with several projects in the $50 million range, like Building F of the Rhodes Corporate Park and the new Centrelink offices in Camperdown, commencing construction. The industrial sector also looks set for a rewarding few months, however, the value of construction expected to commence is tipped to drop off in August as fewer projects approach construction phase.
VICTORIA Victoria is in good stead for the third quarter with an expected 14 percent increase in construction from the second quarter. In fact all major sectors are shaping up for substantial growth except for two sectors. The hardest hit sector is expected to be the civil sector, which is anticipating a 31 percent decline in work commencing from the previous three months. The retail/ hospitality sector will also take a hit with 16 percent less construction commencing during the period, but hope lies during peak construction in July when more than $290 million worth of construction in the sector is slated to get off the ground.
Queensland In the wake of natural disasters, Queensland’s construction market is looking a little worse for wear. The state is expecting an overall growth of 10 percent over the coming months, but the
majority of this will be thanks to civil construction. Building in the state is set for an 18 percent decline as several sectors take falls. Biggest hit is tipped to be the commercial sector, which is facing a 74 percent decline from the previous quarter. The residential sector is also facing a slow down with only 4 percent growth in the short-term. However there are still opportunities in these sectors with projects like Madison on Mayne units and shops in Bowen Hills expected to start construction in July.
Western Australia Less than six months ago the Western Australian market was full steam ahead but the coming months paint a very different picture. The market is bracing for a 48 percent decline from the previous three months as civil construction slows down. However, there is still hope as the residential and commercial sectors power ahead anticipating 35 percent and 44 percent increases respectively. It is also interesting to point out that the education sector, unlike many other states, is still turning out opportunity as the state government is still heavily investing in education facilities. The slow period in Western Australia is not expected to last as mining in the state continues to boom.
South Australia It seems that South Australia is the little state that could, boasting 268 percent growth during the coming months. Unlike its neighbouring states, South Australia’s civil construction is set to almost double, while the building is set to quadruple from the previous three months. This increase is primarily the result of several large-value projects moving into construction in the state, including the new $1.7 billion Royal Adelaide Hospital and the $394 million Adelaide Convention Centre redevelopment.
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INDUSTRY MATTERS
Green Star Project Management Made Easy The drive towards greater sustainability in built environments has resulted in many governments and large corporations including green principles into their property requirement.
Green claims for products to be used in building design and fit outs can only be authenticated through verification by an independent, credible and recognised third party, as indicated by an Ecolabel.
The South Australian and Victorian State Governments, for example, have mandated that all new government-occupied office building developments achieve minimum Green Star standards. Consider also that 11% of Australia’s CBD commercial office buildings are Green Star certified, and that the Australian Institute of Project Management runs a ‘Why Sustainability?’ course, as part of their continuing professional development (CDP) program. It’s easy to see that understanding green building is now a project management imperative.
The international principals and procedures for eco-labeling are set out in the International Organisation for Standards (ISO) ISO 14024. Within ISO 14024, there are three types of ecolabels, all are multi criteria and are based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). A Type 3 ecolabel can be achieved through selfdeclaration and a Type 2 ecolabel can be achieved through audit by a second-party. The Type 1 ecolabel requires independent auditing by a third party, and is therefore regarded as the most robust, credible and assuring of the three.
The job of a building project manager, whose responsibility it is to deliver all stated objectives as well as to ensure compliance and deliver market viability, can often be a huge challenge.
The Environmental Choice Australia Ecolabel is the only Type 1 ecolabel on the Australian market. It is awarded by not-for- profit organisation Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA) to products and services that meet voluntary environmental performance standards. GECA has 41 standards which are developed in accordance with ISO 14024 and are based on global best practice. The standards determine minimum environmental performance criteria across various aspects of a product or service’s life cycle, for example sourcing, manufacture, use and disposal.
There are myriad project management tools that can assist in overseeing the triple constraints of cost, time and quality. Minimising risk, by ensuring compliance with the green building sector ’s voluntary mechanisms, including NABERS and the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA’s) Green Star environmental rating system (Green Star), often requires detailed knowledge and documentation for implementation. The good news is that there are accessible tools available to help streamline the workload of the green building project manager. Here we take a look at how best to identify credible ‘green claims’ on products as a way to achieving Green Star certification. 30 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
The Green Star environmental rating system for buildings was launched by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), the peak national body that recognises and rewards environmental leadership in the design of the built environment. ‘Green Star’ is a comprehensive, national, voluntary environmental rating system that defines best
practice for the design and construction of buildings. It is the GBCA’s key tool to assist the building industry in its transition to sustainable developments. GECA’s was the first product certification scheme to be recognized by the GBCA within their Assessment Framework for Product Certification Schemes for Green Star Accreditation. Put simply, this means that building fit-out products such as flooring, panel boards, carpets and loose furniture and fittings that are certified against certain GECA standards are rewarded within the GBCA’s Green Star environmental rating system for buildings and can earn maximum Green Star points for green star projects. Growth of the Australian green building sector can be easily seen in growth of the GBCA’s membership, which was launched in 2002, and now stands at 900 organisations from a broad cross section of industry and government. Further, over 500 Green Star projects are currently registered for certification across Australian metropolitan centres. Given this, understanding compliance within the sector is is one way to future-proof green building project management skills. By looking out for products certified under GBCA-recognised GECA standards, project managers can easily streamline specification compliance and stay on the critical path to success for their next Green Star Project.
By Anne-Marie Byrne GECA
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INDUSTRY MATTERS
The Third Green Revolution From a purely scientific view, there is no ‘environmental crisis’. The environment cannot be in crisis. Our environment on earth may become as barren as the moon or as fiery as the sun. In neither case is it a ‘crisis’. Many pundits have pointed out that our planet has been through worse over its four and a half billion years of existence. So it has, and it has survived and will continue to do so. The question is, will we? We don’t need complicated computer models to tell us that our world is changing dramatically. The reason why we need to take the environment more seriously is not because the environment is in crisis but because we are not very much more protected from the adversity of natural disasters than we were before. Despite many years of preparation against earthquakes, the death toll in Japan from the latest earthquake exceeds 15,000. It could have been worse. In the course of human history, there have been two green revolutions before this. The first green revolution is the invention of agriculture. The relationship between agriculture and civilisation is intimate if not integral. The word ‘civilisation’ comes from Latin, civilis, and refers to life in a city-state. Taken in this sense, civilisation simply refers to people living in a densely built environment or a city. The enabling of trade, development of technology and growth of material affluence that came with cities were supported by widespread agriculture. Human population globally shot up from 32 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
around 5 million before agriculture to more than 300 million by the time of the Roman Empire. Over the following centuries, most of Europe was denuded and replaced with agricultural land. Today, except for Russia, most of Europe does not have primary forests. This trend continues to grow largely unabated throughout the world as more countries become “civilised”. The second green revolution began in the 18th century when agriculture was industrialised. The use of machinery greatly increased the productivity of farms and contributed to the establishment of the textile industry as a major driver of the industrial revolution. Another burst came during the 1960s, when the development of high-yielding crops, hybridised seeds, synthetic fertilisers and chemical pesticides more than doubled productivity levels. Both green revolutions are correlated with an explosion in human population and an influx from farming communities to the cities. As of this year, the proportion of people in cities has reached 50% and the global population is nearly 7 billion. The call for a third green revolution is often attributed to a book by Rachel Carson published in the 60s called Silent Spring. This coincided with the second burst of the second green
revolution. It is in many ways an antithesis of the first two revolutions - an augury of industrialisation gone awry. Admonitions to industrialised societies to lower their ecological and carbon footprints have, not unexpectedly, met with cool if not hostile receptions. Perhaps we have been looking at things the wrong way. The first two green revolutions dramatically changed the world. The third green revolution will do the same. Let us look at just one aspect of this change: economics. Economics is the constant and strongest objection raised to the third green revolution. Yet, both economics and ecology are concerned with oikos, our home. Unfortunately, the management of our home (economics) has been at the expense of the health of our home (ecology). This is simply foolish. We are prodigal children living off our legacy. The resistance to ecological practices arise not from their inherent economic disadvantages but from the cost of making structural changes. Such costs are necessary, however, for any country that wants to develop and progress. A recent report from Yale highlights this (http://epi.yale. edu). Green economies succeed where the economic future is deemed to be ecological as well. In some countries, like Sweden, moves to protect their natural resources or
move away from oil dependency had begun many years before as a result of economic and political concerns. A green economy is one that is not dependent on the exploitation of natural resources but one that focuses on adding value. Significantly, the addition of value brings more economic benefit than the exploitation of natural resources. Not only is the latter a finite supply, the wages in such industries are low and the work often menial and dangerous. Adding value, on the other hand, requires a skilled workforce and better working conditions. The added bonus is a beautiful natural landscape that is attractive in terms of healthy living, tourism and leisure. The third green revolution is about the necessary change in human society as we reach the limits of the industrial age. The countries that will be ahead in the next age will be the ones that embrace green issues now.
Dr. Ong Boon Lay Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning The University of Melbourne | 33
SUSTAINABILITY column
Living Smarter Within Bigger Cities By Jeff Salton
As part of the annual Light in Winter Festival at Federation Square, a free public forum, ‘Picture Melbourne in 2030’, addressed the growing issue of population growth and how the city could respond to the challenges impacting cities today. CEO of City of Melbourne, Dr. Kathy Alexander and CEO of Federation Square, Kate Brennan joined with Siemens CEO Albert Goller and Chairman of local SME Textor Technologies, Phillip Butler, to discuss the importance of leadership and innovation in combating these challenges.
urbanisation and the competitive pressures of globalisation, there is every chance that we can turn our growing population into a positive advantage” he added.
To provide some insight into the challenges facing Australian cities, Matthew Sundberg, Senior Researcher for the Picture the Future 2030 research commissioned by Siemens, discussed why Australia was in a productivity decline and how the future could look if we acted now to reverse these trends.
“If left unaddressed, these pressures will hit cities hard and could impact on jobs, affordability, congestion and the overall liveability” Sundberg said, “For example, today, we have five people working to support each retiree. By 2030, our ageing population trend suggests that there will only be three workers per retiree. To address this, we could work longer hours or we could increase our productivity to ensure we maintain our quality of life”.
According to the research, today the cost of urban congestion, which includes wasted time in traffic, maintenance, fuel and emissions costs, is approximately $14 billion per annum. As Australia’s population rises to an expected 29 million by 2030, congestion is expected to cost $20.4 billion by 2020 unless Australian cities are prepared to undertake a major review of their infrastructure. “Population growth is just one of several issues that are set to transform cities, and already, high levels of urban congestion indicate that cities are in need urgent change” said Goller. “If cities can work collaboratively to address other challenges such as climate change, the ageing demographic, increasing 34 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
In addition, Australia needed to address its declining productivity rate.
Engineer s Australia’s 2010 Infrastructure Report Card, modeled by ANZ, suggests that $100 billion per year for six years will be required to make up for the lack of investment into Australia’s infrastructure, which has led to below average quality of rail, power, gas, port and other critical infrastructure assets. Picture the Future research suggests that 80 percent of today’s buildings will still be in use in our cities in 2030. Therefore, retrofits and smart technologies could prove to be the solution for reducing the footprint and improving the efficiency of our built environment. Federation Square’s Kate Brennan
said the complex had heavily invested in clean and efficient technology and was working towards being carbon neutral by the end of 2012. Similarly, the City of Melbourne is focussed on educating and engaging the community to understand the impact of productivity and sustainability. Its 1200 Buildings program is an innovative vehicle to help the city achieve zero net emissions by 2020. In an age where textile manufacturing in Australia is almost unheard of due to increasing competitive pressures, Textor Technologies Chairman, Phillip Butler says productivity and strong leadership are the secrets to manufacturing locally. Despite the challenges facing cities today, Goller believes that it is an exiting time where cities and the people within them, can work together to shape a new sustainable future. “Australia is a lucky country with a wealth of natural resources, a high level of skills and a culture of innovative thinkers. Harnessing these attributes will allow us to become more competitive and sustainable, ensuring our future generations have a bright and positive future. Technology alone is not enough; we also need people to collaborate and an alignment of processes to create sustainable and productive cities that continue to rank among the most liveable cities in the world”.
association matters
Sports Stadia: Lean On Precast
Sporting events play a huge role in the lives of many, but the function of today’s sporting stadia extends way beyond being a venue for football, cricket and other sporting games. Today’s stadia have become stateof-the-art, multi-purpose facilities which play a central role in a community’s activities and have significant revenue-generating potential. Modern stadia can be works of art in themselves and must meet a wide range of needs, incorporating car parking, function rooms, conference facilities, concert and exhibition spaces and sometimes even accommodation. Form and function are of the essence with both architectural and structural considerations at the fore. The use of concrete in stadia stretches way back to the Roman Empire. Probably the most famous stadium in the world – the Colosseum – relies on concrete. Built between 70 and 72 AD, it still stands today. We have come a long way since the Colosseum and designers all over the world now enjoy the freedom of design, durability, sustainability, cost-saving and structural qualities of precast concrete – ideally suited in its application for today’s stadia. It is the reason why almost all modern stadia now include precast concrete elements. Every Australian capital has many, many examples – Sydney Olympic Stadium, Adelaide’s AAMI Stadium and Adelaide Oval, Brisbane’s Cricket Ground and Suncorp Stadium and Melbourne’s MCG – not to mention the suburbs and regions which also boast a myriad of precast concrete stadia – the Blacktown Athletic Stadium
in NSW, and WA’s Subiaco Football Stadium and AK Reserve Athletics Stadium. One recently redeveloped stadium is the new state-of-the-art Metricon Stadium at Carrara on the Gold Coast. The local sporting ground has played host to a colourful array of codes, events and identities since it began life as the Laver Oval, and has moved into premier status after an extensive $144 million redevelopment that has totally transformed the site. Having a stadium of this calibre will help position the Gold Coast as a world class sporting destination, put its resident AFL team, the new Gold Coast SUNS, on the map and give local residents and visiting sports fans enjoyment of sporting events in A-grade conditions. The 25,000-seat venue will also play host to cricket fixtures and is central to the Gold Coast’s 2018 Commonwealth Games bid. The new stadium is a far cry from the (now demolished) original stands, which were hastily designed for televised night games back in the VFL days. Its 8.5-metre-high, 23-metre-wide high-definition LED scoreboard is one of the largest in Australia and its 450 square metres of solar panelling will generate approximately 275,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year – around 20% of the stadium’s total electricity needs. Commissioned in 2009, with a
completion date of May 2011, speed of construction was a high priority for the developer - and extensive use of precast throughout played a major role, not only in the successful delivery of the project but also in surmounting some of the design challenges associated with building a stadium to follow the curves of an “oval” oval for AFL - rather than a rectangular one. In total, more than 8,000 square metres of hollowcore flooring and a staggering 15 kilometres of both prestressed and conventionally reinforced seating plats (numbering almost 2000) were supplied for the redevelopment by one of our Members, Brisbane’s Precast Concrete Products. Speed was of the essence with all precast elements manufactured and erected in only seven months. A very high quality finish, in terms of both aesthetics and durability - was called for and achieved. And the precast elements were delivered on-time and on-budget. The end result is a beautiful, stateof-the-art stadium which will play a big role in the Gold Coast’s community for many years to come. The redevelopment generated more than 1,100 jobs during construction, and now that it is operational, should create 700 jobs per event and contribute an estimated $340 million to the economy over the next decade.
By Sarah Bachmann
| 35
OHS column
Safety in Design In the construction and mining industries, safety is more than a consideration; it is at the heart of every action and operation. Outside of these industries however, safety remains extremely important. Controlling the ever-changing risks to safety is a challenge. Safety In Design (SiD), however, provides a planned and disciplined risk management approach and is utilised early in the design process so as to mitigate potential hazards to end users of a facility or structure. As the Safe Work Australia Guide (2006) refers, SiD is a process defined as ‘the integration of hazard identification and risk assessment methods in the design process to eliminate or minimise the risks of injury or damage throughout the life of the item being designed.’ Implementing a systematic SiD process during the design phase has multiple benefits as this phase has the biggest impact on the safety of the building or structure to its future users including occupiers, visitors, maintainers and the public. For the designer, SiD provides a formally-documented and compliant process that demonstrates systematic risk management concepts for the prevention of injury and disease. Additional benefits to the project are improved useability of the building/structure, systems and facilities, improved productivity, reduced costs and better prediction and management of production and operational costs over the lifecycle of the building/structure. For clients, the benefits of SiD include reducing costs associated with future retrofitting production downtime, higher insurance premiums, environmental clean-up costs and any costs associated with possible litigation.
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For occupiers meanwhile, benefits include the reduced risk of illness and injury to constructors, end-users and those who maintain the building. In 2011 SiD methods are constantly evolving but are, thankfully, a long way from early concepts and laws which can only be described as brutally simple yet effective. For example, 1700BC saw the Code of Hammurabi law number 229 state “if a builder builds a house for someone and does not construct it properly, and the house which he builds falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s attitude to safety, meanwhile, was illustrated in his book ‘The Natural House’, where he remarked “there is no excuse which I have heard, that can compensate a poorly-designed building. The only thing that I can say about an individual who takes no responsibility for his ideas is [that he is] either lazy or a truly uncaring person”. Today’s SiD is more formalised, considering safety systematically throughout the design process and documenting the safetyrelated options and decisions while communicating the risks between the designer, operator and other stakeholders. Responsibility for achieving safe design rests with those who control or manage design functions, including people who are directly involved in design activities as well as decision makers who influence the design outcome. In essence, the architect or engineer, clients, developers, manufacturers, managers and directors can all be considered ‘designers’ if their decisions or
guidance directly influence facility or structure’s design.
the
The new Model Work Health and Safety Bill imposes a duty for designers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that a building or structure is designed to be without risks to health and safety for the whole of its lifecycle. It also has to protect those involved in, or affected by, the use or purpose for which the building was designed, the building’s handling and storage, its construction, foreseeable activity for which it was designed, the manufacture, assembly, commissioning and de-commissioning of the building and finally, its demolition and disposal. The designer must carry out or arrange the carrying out of such assessment to ensure the building or structure is designed without risk to the health and safety of future users and ensure that adequate information is provided to relevant stakeholders relating to the design of the building or structure. The role of design is central to achieving functional safe performance for future users of the building or structure. Through incorporating Safety In Design, those responsible have the opportunity to incorporate safety early in the design process to mitigate risk to end users, and in doing so contribute to the creation of sustainable, safe built environments.
Andrew Angelides Senior Safety and Risk Consultant Davis Langdon, An AECOM Company
GLASS column
A Light Touch: The Latest in WindowS Windows play a huge part in the energy efficiency of your home. Careful consideration of the size, type and placement of windows will ensure a more comfortable home while reducing the need to artificially heat and cool your house - which will save on energy bills all year round. Which raises the interesting question of how to make better glazing choices. Every home has the potential to achieve a warm, comfortable look, that is both sophisticated and filled with light; and windows play a major role in achieving this, creating a lasting impact on quality of life in the home. A steady trend in building and renovation is the installation of energy efficient glass for windows. Home buyers want to know more about their window and glass options as they become increasingly more aware of the difference effective window glass can make to the comfort, energy efficiency and general appeal and liveability of their homes. Ordinary windows are an energy leak. A typical, adequately-insulated building that uses ordinary glass can lose up to 49% of heat through the windows in winter. The same windows allow up to 87% of solar heat gain during summer. Energy efficient windows can create a more comfortable, light filled and secure property, as well as help reduce your property’s energy consumption. Less artificial heating and cooling also means a more rewarding and healthier place to spend time.
Greater energy efficiency lets you have larger window areas as well, particularly to meet recent energy star rating requirements in the building code. The added benefit is the ability to maximise views and natural light and to give you the perfect indooroutdoor living experience. You can also combine energy efficient glass with windows that reduce noise and the need for cleaning, provide protection from intruders and create shelter from extreme weather. How to select better windows Priorities in glass selection can be determined by climate and window orientation. Depending where you live, homes can benefit from the natural warming effect of solar heat during winter and its reduction during summer. Heat loss and gain, ventilation and insulation are the three things you need to think about when it comes to glazing. Any time you’ve got the sun hitting the window you’ve got something like 500 watts of energy per square metre. If you think of it in terms of light bulbs or ovens, an oven is typically a 2000 watt element, so for a one square metre window you’ve got up to a quarter of an oven. So that direct sunlight - direct solar radiation coming into your home - is the biggest issue you need fix by thinking about energy efficient glass, window orientation and shading.
To get the best results from windows consider the following: • Achieving a thermally efficient house can be helped by orientating your house north where possible, and locating and choosing energy efficient windows to let sunshine in on cold days and exclude it when it’s hot. • Northerly facing sunrooms capture the best of the sunny aspect without the harshness of the afternoon heat and are especially valued in the colder parts of Australia. • Most bedrooms should get morning sun; therefore, north-east position would be a good option. • The westerly sun as it sets is the most severe, so using a low-e coated glass and toned darker glass can help to block the uncomfortable sun load. • Ventilation dramatically affects comfort. Position opening windows to maximise this breeze benefit. • Look at windows in the house, not just the window on its own; stand back and look to see if it suits the room or the look you are going for. Simplicity is obviously a key factor in making it easier for both the construction industry and homeowners to sensibly glaze their windows. And options now exist for affordable, Australian-made low-e single-glazed glass types, which offer different levels of solar protection, and being single-glazed units, can be readily substituted for ordinary glass, making it simple for builders, specifiers and consumers to improve the efficiency and liveability of their buildings.
By Cameron Hooke | 37
LEGAL COLUMN
Beware... Greenwash Marketing In light of the current global climate, green building promises have been extensive as an increasing amount of firms in the industry try to jump onto the evergrowing green bubble. From product claims, to delivery techniques, it seems as if everyone is trying to cash in on the action.
In a recent Federal Court ruling, the highest penalty for misleading conduct this year with a hard hitting $5.26 million fine; the price of miscommunication proving to be a heavy toll.
by the contravener and by others who might be tempted to contravene the Act’. Court should not leave room for any impression of weakness in its resolve to impose penalties sufficient to ensure the deterrence, not only of the parties actually before it, but also of others who might be tempted to think that contravention would pay, and detection lead merely to a compliance program for the future,” The Court said.
Although unrelated to the construction industry, it provides wake-up call for all companies that are making claims they simply can’t meet. The penalty was handed down to Optus who tried to have the benefit of misleading advertisement headlines while purporting to correct the misleading impression.
Although the courts found that “little loss or damage has been suffered by consumers on this occasion” they still imposed the $5.2 million fine referable to the profit that might have been gained by Optus as a result of campaigns that ran from Anzac day 2010 until October of the same year.
The court was scathing in rejecting arguments that persons reading the advertisement would understand the purported disclaimer
The case has ramifications for all those who deal with the public or who advertise to attract customers. Offers must now be carefully cast to avoid being viewed as misleading. Qualifications which are in small print and not able to be quickly and confidently understood will not wash.
But how do we know if what they claim is true, and what are the consequences for companies that make fraudulent claims?
“Contrary to the submission, it would only be exceptionally gifted individuals who would grasp the full import of those words on first seeing them in the advertisement. This advertisement plainly misleads consumers into thinking that they will receive 150GB of broadband when they are getting no such thing unless they assiduously ensure that they exhaust all of their off-peak usage allowance before exhausting their peak usage allowance. In other words, the disclaimer was ineffective” The Court stated. These kinds of small print tactics are often used in advertising as a means of gaining greater exposure. Often the means behind these seemingly sneaky advertising strategies are not malicious or overtly misleading, simply tactical marketing steps taken without reflection to focus the advertisement on the most attractive features. Other times they are simply misleading. In either scenario it is clear that those found guilty of this offence will be punished severely. “The principal purpose of a financial penalty in this context is, as French J has observed, ‘to put a price on contravention that is sufficiently high to deter repetition 38 | www.awardmagazine.com.au
The action by the Competition Watchdog is overdue, with no one remembering the “big safe and friendly” advertisements of Estate Mortgages just before they went into bankruptcy with massive debts. While it is imperative for any competitive industry to be able to sell its green credentials, it is even more important that they be able to back their claims, or face legal consequences. In these days of competition for lessees and for business, it will be harder and harder to escape if the green status of the building is exaggerated or promoted prior to it being fully earned. Promoting green options as part of the superior and healthy environment of a new development will be the subject of scrutiny if it is over pitched and unsupported by hard evidence.
Jim Doyle Doyles Construction Lawyers
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