Petie Walker’s fireside chat with The Fifth Estate at Blue Zones and How to Make Them revealed that one of Australia’s biggest residential developers is deep into the challenge of carving out social sustainability and how to measure it.
Walker, group head of sustainability and delivery at Stockland, said the developer had in fact been working on creating community within its developments for its 70 year lifespan. But in recent times it’s also sought to embed sustainability and First Nations considerations into its core operational areas. Walker’s role was created to make ESG principles central to financial decision-making and project delivery.
The goal is to position sustainability as a key commercial advantage for Stockland in its $50 billion development pipeline, which includes residential, logistics, office and community real estate projects.
“Social responsibility as a start is really a licence to operate, and you have that as your baseline housekeeping”, Walker said.
Beyond that, stakeholders and employees are drawn to “socially responsible organisations they can feel proud of, talk to their friends and family, and our investors are increasingly requiring evidence that we’re doing the right thing and how we are investing in it.”
Walker said that for major bids such as the massive Waterloo redevelopment project in inner Sydney, which Stockland is leading a consortium on, the government favoured developers that could “quantifiably demonstrate the social impact”.
Capital partners are “all very interested in social impact, and it is a baseline criterion for them that we can demonstrate we are being true to purpose and vision and delivering on that.”
For Walker, social impact is about “making intentional investments and then being able to see that it has made a difference to an individual or community’s lives, vibes, how they operate in a really positive way.”
She told the audience: “I was certainly drawn to Stockland about eight years ago [after a long background with Leighton] because they were all about community, they really loved their staff, and they were about creating great, vibrant communities.
“It really opened a can of worms on how we should be thinking about this, and we went from measuring inputs to measuring outcomes – and the way we did that was by getting empirical data.”
Walker said the team had matured rapidly over the past four years under the guidance of social sustainability manager Justine Felton, someone who is a “true social impact expert.
Felton “really lifted our thinking and changed the way we thought about how we are investing in social impact and how we are measuring it,” Walker said,
Felton also convinced the company that it should follow a wellbeing framework by a credible global body. And to do so, the company had to change how it measured social impact.
“Like many others, we have been reporting on our inputs, which were that we spent x amount on Indigenous procurement, x amount on philanthropic exercises.
This needed to be from credible sources – whether a university or commissioned by government – that would put an economic value on what the company was doing.
There’s “a lot of research” to show, for instance, that $1 spent on Indigenous procurement results in $4.41 of economic benefit to Indigenous communities.
There are other more complex formulas for attributing the impact of various programs. “You pull all that together, put it into a machine, and it spits out the impact we are having across those domains in an economic term – and because of that, we committed to creating over a billion dollars of social value by 2030.
But achieving that goal won’t be a neat trajectory. It’s a bit like carbon ambitions, Walker quipped, “it’s not a straight line.”.
“When you make a commitment to carbon, it’s not a straight line. It is going to be up and down depending on what your pipeline is and what your initiatives are, and how you can get there, and social impact is the same.
“It really intersects with our liveability criteria, which a lot of developers are more familiar with. It is around making sure that you’re creating [green] spaces that people can actually come together in.”
The company understands how this links to better mental and physical health and wellbeing, and it typically includes walking trails, Indigenous procurement, access to education, early childhood and medical services in designing communities.
And the investment needs to be sensitive to the specific characteristics of the population that will live in the communities.
For instance, at the Forster shopping centre in New South Wales, where there was a significant aging population, the focus needed to be on accessibility.
“This completely changed how the team was going to allocate their capital expenditure in the coming years, like upgrades to the amenities, ensuring entryway designs are elevated to truly integrate accessibility into the fabric of the centre.”
First Nations voices critical
“I’m not going to say Stockland was great at First Nations engagement and design with Country four years ago – we weren’t. We were skimming the surface,” Walker said.
“Why? Because we didn’t have any First Nations people working in our organisation. We had a Reconciliation Action Plan. We had a lot of well-intentioned people, because we are a very value-driven organisation but unless you’ve actually got First Nations voice within your organisation, you’re never going to get there.”
To remedy this Walker brought on the company’s first national Indigenous engagement manager, Maree Ansey, who now oversees a team of four. Over 18 months the company developed a designing with Country framework.
More on Waterloo
At Waterloo the challenge is huge. It has existing social housing and will include 3000 apartments, with 50 per cent allocated for affordable and social housing.
The development consortium includes Link Wentworth housing, City West Housing, and Birribee Housing.
“That’s probably the real key difference. This isn’t just a developer undertaking a purely market-driven apartment project, as might happen in other contexts. The consortium is extremely focused on social outcomes.
“The project will incorporate job links and a range of different services to really engage and connect with the community throughout the process, involving significant consultation.
“Because we’ve got our consortia partners, a really key part of what they will do beyond managing the housing will be providing rapid wrap around services. So going forward, the tenants will have those wraparound services to support them to be living their best lives and taking advantage of the place making that’s been created, so it will all come together to really have the greatest impact.”