One bright note from last week’s Building Ministers Forum was an agreement to progress work to increase the energy performance requirements for residential construction under the National Construction Code for the planned 2022 iteration.

NSW, we think, is the standout on taking action on dodgy building, but for the rest of the nation…we’re still waiting.

Clients and their consultants are at the front of the bus, in a broken industry. 

Hobart recently unveiled a “smart bin” trial that could see bins deployed across the city that can advise when they’re full and need emptying outside of the normal schedule.

The NSW state’s construction industry is out of control. We need a NSW Commission of Inquiry. And we need Rowena Orr to run it. And we need it to be state based so that the politicians and bureaucrats can’t hide behind national inquires. 

Currently, poor energy performance of buildings in Queensland, the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia means big bills, high carbon emissions and poor comfort for those who live, work or study in them. 

Opinion: It’s hard to believe that a government agency can be this ineffectual.

The recently launched Heuga platform led by the DNW Group claims is the customer-facing component of a new collaborative building model premised on off-site construction.

The City of Melbourne is undertaking a “next generation” sustainability-focused revamp of the Council House 1 site.

Commercial offices are a “forgotten market” in WA for exploring sustainable building options. Now they’ve got a new timber building designed by Harris Jenkins Architects and Josh Byrne and Associates.

The doors of what’s believed to be Australia’s tallest engineered timber office building in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley are now officially open.

In the UK, proptech startup Ehab is using blockchain to decentralise the development process for the likes of prefab and 3D printing companies so that they can produce more affordable and sustainable housing.

A new Passive House build and design company in Melbourne has snapped up the opportunity to promote equity investment to smaller or so called “retail” investors.

There is a lot of grief in Australia’s construction industry this week following the demise of Strongbuild. It’s time for some frank realities to be outed from the shadows. 

The failure of Strongbuild last week has already opened the door to new possibilities in the industry. Replacing the initial shock of the failure of the popular company is a sense of new opportunities for those missed the prefab boat a few years ago.