Melbourne-based developer Lucent is branching out and taking its sustainable brand of apartments to the growing owner-occupier family and downsizer market in Brighton, 12 kilometres south east of the CBD

Mirvac is poised to deliver a $350 million exemplar of how to achieve net zero, high performance, energy efficient and affordable housing in Altona North in Melbourne.

There’s a great deal of anguish still to play out with people forced out of their homes but a new bill just presented to the NSW government looks like a good first step

On the global stage, there’s a renaissance in sustainability under way. Embodied carbon, waste and materiality are quickly becoming top of mind.

Social value can be up to 15 per cent of non-price assessments in construction tenders, but are the metrics genuine? If not, it’s a huge missed opportunity for this sector with so many multiplier effects in the economy.

Architect and broadcaster Peter Maddison calls out the “nonsense” of 6 Star Energy Rated homes with solar panels if the design is all wrong. Likewise the poor performance of most buildings.

The property market love affair with stone benchtops for bathrooms and kitchens is proving deadly for hundreds of Australian workers.

Thirty years after its inception, Passivhaus design, which results in high-performing buildings that use hardly any energy, looks set to hit the mainstream.

Builders and specifiers may need to check the labels on aluminium composite panels (ACPs) being supplied for building projects because of a proposed out-of-cycle amendment to the 2019 National Construction Code (NCC).

I recently attended a conference in the UK that discussed future trends affecting the global construction industry, and what struck me was the stark lack of consensus, clarity and strategy we have in Australia around the future of our construction and engineering industry, compared with many other countries.

In response to a recent report highlighting New Zealand’s problem with embodied carbon in construction, the head of a metal industry organisation Nick Collins has suggested carbon is only part of the story and that a wider approach is needed to clean up the construction industry, which includes a bigger role for the local metal manufacturing sector.

Having to pay high cumulative prices to find out what the rules are for construction doesn’t make sense. It’s like getting a licence and then having to pay to access each of the road rules. One of the comments on this story since we first posted suggests it just might be unconstitutional. It certainly feels unjust.

Comment: You could never accuse David Chandler of being a shrinking violet.

Rectifying an information and evidence shortfall in the now widely cited building and construction crisis needs to be an important part of improving policy making and regulation. 

 In July, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and the state’s minister for planning, Richard Wynne, trumpeted that $600 million would tackle Victoria’s high-rise cladding crisis. It was paraded as a safety solution for owners of affected buildings but the “fix” was a contemptible confidence trick.