If you want to know what our panellists are fired up about, ahead of the Big Debate next week, here’s a hint!
Ché Wall does not like the format of our Big Debate. The four minutes we’ve allocated for each speaker is simply not enough time to explain the complex problems he’s got with the National Construction Code and green building rating tools. Even though there’s a very generous QandA session after our version of the structured Oxford style debate system.
No matter. If Wall needs more time, we’re happy to offer it, even if it’s just an additional minute.
In fact, we’re really glad he’s agreed to address the event. In recent times he’s raised some serious concerns with the rating tools that have now been around for more than two decades.
Joining him in those concerns is fellow co-founder of the Green Building Council Maria Atkinson, who will also be on the panel.
We get where the concerns about the tools are coming from – we need critical analysis and hardheaded revisions for everything we do – no matter how brilliant the concept.
Getting an entire industry to agree to the same pathway to big goals is unbelievably difficult, we know.
And given we seem to be addicted to voluntary standards that promise not to stress anyone out too much – or at all – then progress is hard won. And a lot slower than it needs to be.
But there is progress.
Defenders of the tools point to widespread transformation of the industry – sustainable materials are available even at Bunnings.
There’s enormous work to commercialise green steel and low carbon concrete and constant search for better construction methods that slash waste and build time.
But this is not widespread.
The truth is that below the A team leadership level the trickle down effect is way too slow for what we need to achieve market transformation of a scale that’s aligned to climate.
It’s the time frame what done it
Time is the most precious commodity and the most scarce.
It’s why we pushed forward with this debate, despite the raised eyebrows and misgivings of the some well intentioned people in the industry who are working hard to bring everyone with them.
So, what else are the main points of contention from our panellists and other industry participants?
We’ve already heard about Phil Thallis’ issues with the NCC here.
Such as tiny opening for windows that provide mandatory safety but turn apartments into hot boxes. And:
“Increasingly, we need an extra consultant for everything; it’s very rare you can get out of any apartment building with less than 20 consultants in New South Wales.”
Another huge problem is the need for performance solutions, with barely any “deemed to satisfy” provisions available, which makes smaller apartment buildings almost extinct, he said.
His firm Hill Thalis has designed more than 100 apartment buildings but now small and medium scaled buildings are “just evaporating [as a housing choice]”.
Ché Wall of Flux Consultants is more focused on NABERS and Green Star.
“If you look at the current regulations, they haven’t delivered against their objectives,” he told us.
“There’s an increasing mismatch between what’s really needed to demonstrate climate and sustainable leadership versus what the tools reward.”
Namely the accounting of greenhouse gasses.
He says, “if you’re trying to serve the whole market it will come at the expense of what’s actually required to lead the market.”
Investors need clear metrics
The big problem is that the rating tools are using “consumer facing labels” with elements traded off against each other to achieve a final score.
Instead what’s needed are clear metrics, that’s what’s important, such as the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) scheme. It requires the reporting of emissions with third party verification. And it’s these clear metrics that financial institutions are looking for with their investment decision, Wall says.
In the early days, he says, it was all about getting consumers engaged. “Now it’s about giving the banks the tools they need to direct their financing – and consumer labels are problematic.”
Wall has some ideas he’ll share of what best practice is and why some countries are performing well.
Adrian Piani, chief executive of the Australian Building Codes Board is hopeful of good progress with a review of the NCC which his agency manages, now that it’s been placed in the Treasury portfolio.
“Is the code too complicated?” he asked in the briefing session.
“I think it’s a great question.”
We need to use the “pause” in the NCC wisely, he says …. “take a step back, look at areas of the code that aren’t working as well as they could, with an eye to simplification and productivity.”
Caroline Pidcock who will be our moderator said it’s easy to criticise the code but the truth is that some people have behaved badly. There has been “market failure” and this is why the code has become progressively more complicated.
Simon Croft from the Housing Industry Association said the NCC is “only part of an ecosystem of building regulations” of how state and territories apply building codes, regulations, policies and contract laws.
“Say what you will about the code, it’s been probably one of the most effective federal government tools of any COAG body over many, many decades.”
Croft also said he does not like the word “freeze” which has been used to describe the pause on the NCC. “I think it’s a reset. And the opportunity for looking at what is the building code and its role in 2026 and beyond.”
He thinks technology through AI will offer opportunities to align more complex areas of the code with desired outcomes.
But also that the three year election cycles we use for planning needs to give way to longer term thinking – more like Japanese, who plan to 2050 and beyond.
Haico Scheppers from Arup agrees we need a more simplified system, but he points out that codes overseas are also complicated.
“The code has grown, right? It comes with historical baggage, and it’s tried to add bits and pieces and be a live document.”
There’s contradiction in the DTS (deemed to satisfy) “recipe book”, and “often maybe not enough information on how to use it”.
There’s also the issue of different states signing off differently on the same energy efficiency Section J requirements of the NCC as BASIX and NatHERS overrules them.Which makes the Green Building Council hesitant to sign off.
AI will no doubt help in the future.
He adds that some DFMA (design for manufacturing and assembly) businesses have failed in part at least to the complexities of the code.
Alison Scotland from the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council has a background in Standards Australia so understands a lot of what’s at stake in industry change, which she says is “very technical” and intricate.
It’s important to recognise that existing tools have “very successful governance processes that are evidence and science informed and based.”
If we need to change them, fine, “but don’t kill what we already have”.
She’s also looking forward to addressing the reform processes happening around modern methods of construction and “kit of parts” building systems.
Maria Atkinson of Atkinson Consultancy says key to her arguments for reform of the rating tools lie in climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and a warming planet.
The big outcomes she’d like from the debate and the discussions around the rating tools and code is to see a “lighthouse to law” transition from application of innovation, which goes through a very, very slow process and the codifying of it.
That alignment is too often protracted and it needs standardising, then codified and aligned with climate science. One thing that could be improved she added is to update climate projections.
“We’re not building buildings that are resilient for a future climate that we know is occurring … we have rating tools that are voluntary, and I’ve been public on my criticism of Green Star allowing offsets and not dealing with refrigerants to reduce emissions.”
She’s also sceptical about the consistent call for education.
“We’ve got to also recognise that we’ve all been in this for a long time, and I really push back on the need for education.
“For 25 years, we’ve had passive design, sustainability education across major disciplines, in planning, in architecture, interior and in all codes of engineering, design and delivery.
“And so, I feel like we need to challenge this idea of having institutions constantly celebrate or recognise or talk about innovation, and not move to a system that is really embracing the opportunity of lighthouse to law.”