Better Management Practices Deliver Higher Performance Buildings

Ground Breaking Research Proves Better Management Practices Deliver High Performance Buildings

18 March 2009

The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering today released a ground breaking report that proves that large advances in energy efficiency can be achieved without major capital expenditure on technologies.

The Low Energy High Rise Building Research Report, which involved a survey of 127 buildings in Australia's capital cities and extensive analysis covering the attitudes and energy management practices of tenants and building, asset and portfolio managers, showed that most buildings could achieve a 4 Star NABERS Energy base building rating solely through improved management practices.

Project Director, Sue Salmon said that the findings were good news in the current financial climate.

"This report is internationally ground-breaking.

"It proves that despite the global financial crisis, major improvements in energy efficiency are possible without huge capital expenditure.

"What it is telling us is that the greatest environmental gains can be achieved with little or no cost. Even better, the energy savings can put money back into the pockets of owners and tenants," Ms Salmon said.`

Ms Salmon said key features of buildings that perform well related to human attitudes and practices.

"For example buildings where management is at least partially in-sourced perform better by as much as 1.3 stars NABERS energy rating and buildings where the building, asset and portfolio manager all feel able to affect efficiency perform better by 0.9 stars.

"Buildings that disclose their NABERS performance to tenants perform better by 0.5 stars NABERS Energy.

"This corresponds to a performance improvement of approximately 30 per cent for an average building.

"Extrapolated across the CBD office building sector, this would be equivalent to a 1.2 per cent reduction in Australia's total emissions."

Ms Salmon said the report was based on three years of development and research by the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering, involving extensive and detailed
investigation of attitudes and practices among tenants, building managers, asset managers and portfolio managers.

Participants involved the leading tenants and landlords in Australia. "With the NABERS Energy benchmark and now these new research results the Australian commercial property sector has the tools to be global stars in cutting greenhouse gas emissions," Ms Salmon said.

See Table on page 7 of the Research Report (http://tinyurl.com/LEHR-Report) for all Key Research findings.

Note: Cross correlation between the key research findings means that the individual results are not additive.

For Further information: Sue Salmon 0412 295660

BACKGROUND The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering is an independent institute committed to fostering excellence and innovation throughout Australia. It is a self-funding, not-for-profit body, staffed by volunteers, driven by industry and operating within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney. For further information visit www.warren.usyd.edu.au or contact Robert Mitchell on 02 9351 4048.

The Warren Centre's Low Energy High Rise Project is engaging commercial building owners, investors, tenants and contractors and suppliers in developing a suite of initiatives to overcome the non technical barriers to energy efficiency in existing buildings.


SOURCE: The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering