About

Why Your Building?

Buildings have a significant impact on the environment. Based on whole-of-life considerations, they consume 32% of the world's resources, including 12% of the water used and up to 40% of the energy. Activities around buildings also produce 40% of waste going to landfill and 40% of air emissions. In Australia, commercial buildings produce 10% of the national greenhouse emissions and therefore have a major part to play in meeting Australia's international greenhouse targets.

Commercial buildings also influence social and business outcomes. They are an investment and a cost, can express an organisation's identity and image, contribute to reputation and profitability, affect occupant health, and can shape and be shaped by behaviour. And, of course, they impact the community through the facilities they provide, the activities they house, and their physical presence.

All of these factors relate directly to social and environmental sustainability, and set out the need for Your Building.

What is Your Building?

The Your Building web portal is the key online Australian resource about sustainable commercial buildings. It provides information for all those involved across the building life cycle - from investors, owners, and occupiers to developers, builders, designers, and facility managers.

The design and development of the portal content and web platform were informed by intensive cross-sector and cross-geography industry consultation, and were guided by a steering committee from the project partners. The foundation content on the site has been authored by specialist researchers and industry practitioners and reviewed by other academic and industry specialists. It is aligned with the industry's needs and structured to enable a high level of personal input, interaction, and exchange.

The ultimate objective of the portal is to change behaviours towards more sustainable outcomes right across the commercial buildings industry. To do this the site has been consciously designed to provide both "hard" technical and "soft" strategic and cultural information. It explains how individuals and organisations can profit from sustainable commercial buildings, and illustrates efficiency and effectiveness opportunities that will help deliver better social and environmental performance.

The project

Your Building is a collaborative project of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Construction Innovation,The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC), the peak body of industry and research organisations concerned with sustainability of the built environment.  It was established under a Funding Agreement dated 27 July 2005 between the Commonwealth of Australia represented by the Department of the Environment and Heritage (now Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts) and the CRC.
An active process of industry consultation was conducted to define the project.  It engaged with people who are hands-on in imagining, procuring, constructing, and managing sustainable commercial buildings in Australia.  Involving an industry email survey of ASBEC members, cross-industry and cross-geography workshops, telephone surveys, focus groups and one-on-one meetings, the consultative process was aimed at

• Gaining industry support for the project
• Identification of stakeholders
• Rationalisation of stakeholders into industry groups
• Establishing the knowledge areas of interest for each group
• Identification of particular topics within those topic areas
• Understanding what would make the site relevant, accessible and valuable to users from across the industry's diverse groups of stakeholders.

The foundation content was commissioned from leading researchers and industry specialists in order to ensure that it was both at the forefront of knowledge and relevant to the practitioners who will use it.  Prior to its inclusion on the site, all content was reviewed academically by a team from The University of Melbourne and by appropriate practitioners nominated by ASBEC .

The project team

Your Building was led by the CRC for Construction Innovation and researched, designed, authored, and delivered by a team of researchers, academics, and government and industry specialists. 

The website was developed by the Queensland University of Technology Web Team. Working in partnership with the QUT community, the QUT Web Team ensure the needs of the web audience are met through the provision of high quality, usable, relevant and accessible information and web applications.

Project Leader:	Dr Tony Stapledon
Researchers:	Emily Yip, Murray Hall
Administration:	Bradley Warner, Peter Boxhall
Communications:	Colleen Foelz
Web site definition:	Handshake Media
Web site design:	Hilbert Ho
Web site project management:	Naomi Norman
Web site development:	Patrick Burke, Matt Bailey, Andrew McBride
Web site infrastructure:	Jodie Stuart, Chris Grist, Greg Palmer

Steering Committee
Chair, Peter Scuderi (CRC for Construction Innovation)
Project Leader, Tony Stapledon (CRC for Construction Innovation)
AGO Representative, Tony Marker (AGO)
AGO Representative, Stephen Berry (AGO)
ASBEC Representative, Caroline Pidcock (ASBEC)
ASBEC Representative, Caroline Ostrowski (Association of Consulting Engineers Australia)
ASBEC Representative, Tony McDonald (Building Products Innovation Council)
ASBEC Representative, Paul Waterhouse (Property Council of Australia)
ASBEC Representative, Peter Szental (Szencorp)
CRC Representative, Peter Newton (Swinburne University)
CRC Representative, Colleen Foelz and Bradley Warner (CRC for Construction Innovation)