The Big Debate on the NCC and green rating tools – the highlights

Speakers

• Maria Atkinson, Atkinson Consultancy
• Simon Croft, HIA
• Adrian Piani, Australian Building Codes Board
• Haico Schepers, Arup
• Alison Scotland, Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council
• Philip Thalis, Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects
• Ché Wall, Flux Consultants

Moderator: Caroline Pidcock

Proposition: The National Construction Code and green rating tools are brilliant for sustainability and climate aligned buildings. True or False? 

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Close to 100 people gathered for a debate on the National Construction Code and other rating tools on 31 March at the Sydney offices of Arup in an event sponsored by Autex.

The event was generated by long standing complaints from architects, designers and engineers that our National Construction Code and other green rating tools are sometimes problematic, downright annoying at other times and often lacked the ambition we need to meet climate obligations.

Following are highlights from the night, along with contextual notes and responses around some of the claims posed, in order to add balance from industry experts and a selection of questions posed during the debate.

First stop was to ask the audience how they felt about the key proposition, or provocation:

The National Construction Code and green rating tools are brilliant for sustainability and climate aligned buildings. True or False?

The results were:

• True: 27%
• False: 52%
• Don’t know: 20%

We surveyed the audience again after the debate; results below.

MC Caroline Pidcock kicked off the evening with a reminder about resilience in the face of advancing critical climate.

“We’re living in a poly crisis, climate, biodiversity, housing affordability, cost of living, energy supply all raging at once,” she said.

“Our fossil fuel dependence is not just a climate problem, it’s sovereignty problem, a national security problem right now; and an economic emergency on our doorstep.”

We needed resilient buildings that give people “the capacity to keep functioning while absorbing shocks, and adapting quickly. Buildings that stay cool or warm when the grid struggles, buildings that generate their own power, precincts that can support their neighbours when supply chains fail; communities not held hostage to decisions made on the other side of the world.”

It’s something that needed to be baked in – not added at the end of a project.

Why did all this discussion about building codes and rating tools matter?

“It matters because codes exist precisely because markets fail. And I think the New South Wales Building Commissioner would tell you, there’s no shortage of that.”

Not bad outcomes in some quarters; dreadful in others

Up front during the night came appreciation that at least in some quarters Australia does a pretty good job in the quality of its built environment.

“As I sit here in this office and I look out the window and I reflect on the equality of Australia’s buildings, I think we have to say they’re pretty good, Adrian Piani of ABCB said. “Despite everything we’re going to talk about today, we have a high quality set of infrastructure in this country.”

None of this “stops good engineers and good architects and owners and developers doing better.”

Exactly, said Arup building physicist Haico Schepers. The National Construction Code was actually a minimum standard said. Everyone was free to surpass and exceed it to their heart’s content, he said. And many had, he added, also pointing out the window that looked straight down Barrack Street to the heart of Sydney’s CBD, to buildings several of which he happy to have played a part in.

Phil Thalis, of architects Hill Thalis and 2024 Gold Medal Winner for the Australian Institute of Architects, agreed wholeheartedly that many commercial buildings in Australia were something to be proud of.

But this was far from the case for many other examples of our built environment, he said. Despite a proliferation of codes, there were some very poor outcomes.

“If you go to Parramatta or central Melbourne, there’s black and tinted glass, all-glass towers across suburbia with vast expanses of black roofed houses. They’re all ticked off. They’re all approved for our system. We can’t pretend that a system that allows that is good.”

One of his biggest bugbears, he said, was the excessive number of consultants needed for many developments. In fact, so many that in one case his firm advised a client they’d go broke if they pursued their project.

There were problem with some apartment buildings that showed very good average NatHERS ratings, but a wide range between best and worst rating that left some occupants suffering very poor thermal performance.

Of course planning was often blamed for the world’s built environment ills. “There’s so many people today misrepresent planning as the primary cause of the housing crisis.”

The problem was much bigger, Thalis said.

“It’s financing, tax planning, all the way through the Construction Code and beyond, each siloed, especially the schism between planning concerns looking one way and the [N]CC looking the other way.”

What was primarily being built in today’s market were towers and up market apartments.

“We’re missing the missing middle. We’re missing smaller blocks. We’re missing more affordable types. They aren’t being built. Towers will not solve any affordable housing problem, and in fact, they’re the most expensive and profligate form to be building.”

A non perfect house is more affordable

In an even more provocative stance Thalis argued that there were people happy to live in a non-perfect house if it gave them a roof over their heads.

“Many prospective buyers are happy to live in a home with less solar access if it means homes that are more affordable than their desired animals. Is that unclear why regulation should take this choice away.”

Our codes are an eco system

Adrian Piani of theAustralian Building Codes Board, Alison Scotland of Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council and Simon Croft from the Housing Industry Association – pointed out our codes and rating tools were part of an ecosystem.

And to varying degrees they urged the need to work together and come up with collective solutions.

In the days leading up to the debate The Fifth Estate canvassed views that strongly supported the need for collective work and progress; but others focused on the sanitising cast of sunlight and oxygen which could deal with the abundance of private complaints that could erode confidence and progress as potently as open hostility.

There was strong belief that voluntary orderly progress would clearly work – eventually. But do we have time?

Probably not.

Speed is of the essence.

Ruth Carter, chief executive of the highly regarded building systems engineers CIBSE who recently visited Australia, underscored the urgency in an interview with The Fifth Estate.  We are now “minutes” away from the oft cited critical deadline of 2030 for meaningful action, she said.

We need to get the issues sorted in order to make progress

Adrian Piani of the ABCB wanted to emphasise that at these types of discussions there was often a conflation of issues – in the case of the NCC he said, the problems often cited related to residential property, not hospitals or theatres.

He reminded the audience that the building ministers agree on the code and the states and territories voluntarily adopt it.

Industry observers have often cited some divergence in the take up of the code between the jurisdictions, but in recent times it appears some states have further diverged from a “harmonious” implementation regime, as ministers seem to cave to pressure from housing lobby groups to drop energy efficiency provisions, in particular.

In recent days Tasmania has delayed implementation of the NCC 2025 to 2027 and in Victoria the HIA wasted no time in suggesting a newly appointed housing minister in Victoria do the same and join NSW and Queensland in delaying adoption of the 2025 code to next year. ACT has chosen not to make this edition mandatory until 2027.

Piani said many gripes could be slated home to regulations, not the code, which was performance based.

“It tells us what we want to achieve. I’ve heard, lately, there’s been a fair bit of talk about red tape and the complexity of the NCC.

“I’m sure when people’s houses stay up in northern Queensland, when they’ve lived through a cyclone, that they don’t complain about the red tape in the NCC; it’s fundamentally helped that house stay up and protected the people inside it.

So, it’s a good thing.”

Simon Croft, of HIA, who previously worked for the ABCB noted that the current revision of the NCC was an opportunity for something better.

In 2015, when the code was made free and available online, “it went from a previous user base of 12,000 registered users to now over 400,000 registered users.”

The original code was now dwarfed by “something like 2000 pages and references of over 165 Australian standards…and 1000 secondary references. Nobody can be across that.”

In addition the code was now just one piece of a very big ecosystem and jigsaw puzzle, undertaking many reforms over time.

But what is it to be bold, to look at the code going forward as an opportunity? Croft asked.

How would technology impact the sector? How would AI influence the design of buildings? How can we better integrate the code with our planning systems?

He also shone a light on how renovations and extensions to buildings might be managed rather than leave it to the states and territories, “when we know we have eight to 10 million existing homes built well before our current building codes and regulations.”

Haico Schepers noted that we’d passed 1.5 degrees warming so we needed to be aware we are not anywhere near achieving the broad targets we need to.

So minimum performance for the code doesn’t quite stack up to the challenge. 

“It actually needs to go further. It needs to do that faster.”

Schepers pointed to some systems overseas that prevent any energy use at all between certain times. This “automatically forces the building to become climate responsive. Maybe we should be thinking the same. Maybe we should have a standard that talks about maximum internal conditions.”

Schepers said that the NSW BASIX energy modelling system for housing followed the trajectory of decarbonisation needed by the grid towards zero carbon “quite well”, but “we fail miserably in our materials and our material supply chain.”

We’ve barely set off on the journey, he said. But the potential is huge – pulling materials out of buildings, and re-using them for instance.

He also urged greater clarity on the responsibility between parts of the code, the standards and on transactional costs. And AI should be able to help, he said.

Alison Scotland from ASBEC took an entirely pragmatic stance but one imbued with optimism. Her big focus she said, was the need to “get shit done.”

And there was much to do.

“We need to transform the built environment at a speed and a scale never seen before. We don’t have time to argue amongst ourselves – perfect is the enemy of good in this race.

“We need to use what we’ve developed over the last few decades and just make it happen. We need to commit to working together, rather than spreading discontent, and working together is the only way that shit gets done.”

On mandatory disclosure for resi – do you know how close we are? We are so close

On mandatory disclosure for house energy ratings, Scotland said: “Do you know how close we are? We are so close.”

The New South Wales government, was “diligently working across a range of different industry sectors, industry groups, community groups, to get this ecosystem for success.”

It was a good time! And the success this will achieve “can spread across the country.”

The NSW government was paving the way home on energy ratings which means that the NatHERS tool could deliver “clarity and consistency”.

It would be a boon for the “millions of houses” out there that were far from good.

“We are talking about not perfection, but scale, and that’s what we need. We need to help the million homes out there with a rating of [very low ratings] to improve, by even a few stars – that’s a good thing. Don’t mess with it.

Excellent governance is a thing

“So the great thing with NatHERS, just like other rating tools that we have in Australia, is they have excellent governance mechanisms.

“They’re based on science, they’re backed by data, and they’re not set in stone. They’re designed to evolve as we learn more, innovate more, and this evolution is applied and guided by clear engagement processes.

“These tools have done all the hard work to demonstrate proof that, proof that they go beyond minimum for one thing, but that achieve our sustainability needs.”

CSIRO has future climate files available for use, Scotland added.

You can do more, and you’ve got the tools to do it now, including ability to access CSIRO’s future climate files.

It won’t help to aim for compliance – that’s a “race to the bottom” but nothing stands in the way of aiming for excellence, she said.

Post debate results were:

• True 17% (previously 27%)
• False: 67% (previously 53%)
• Don’t know 15% (previously 20%)

See other articles in this special report on the event