The Australian built environment industry is under increasing pressure to contribute further to a sustainable future.

 

 

It is with great pride that the Construction Innovation has published an Achievements: 2001-2008 document, highlighting many of the outcomes from our research and education programs that have delivered real gains to industry during the centre’s term.

 

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

 

Achievements: 2001-2008 acknowledges a sample of the innovative projects and inspirational people that have made the CRC for Construction Innovation a success, and who continue to underpin innovation in the built environment in the future.

 

 

The future looks good. Australia’s construction industry is uniquely positioned to capitalise on forecasted areas of rapid growth in Asia, in particular the booming economies of India and China. 

 

This unprecedented growth in construction will continue to place pressure on the sector to produce more efficiently and to develop new ways to address rising environmental concerns during the entire building life cycle. 

 

But… skills, labour and materials shortages, together with increasing consumer demands for sustainable built environments are already principal challenges for construction.

 

Environmental, social and economic sustainability have been identified by industry as key areas to drive change for future productivity.

 

There is a clear and increasingly urgent need for the sector to invest in technologies that will deliver future productivity gains to the industry and allow it to capitalise on growth opportunities that will be grounded in sustainable construction principles.

 

The time to deliver on that need is now.

 

 

This month we also published the final investment proposal for the new Sustainable Built Environment centre to commence operations from 1 July 2009.

 

This plan offers an exciting opportunity to continue the momentum created by Construction Innovation in construction research, with a new research portfolio geared to emerging industry priorities across areas of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

 

Over the next month, we hope to receive firm commitments from our investing partners that they will be with us on the journey ahead.

 

 

The much anticipated report on the future of the CRC Program was released by Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research on 5 August. 

 

The report is generally supportive of continuing the CRC Program, and recommends changes that would appear to favour a bid for the proposed Sustainable Built Environment CRC. 

 

The report suggests that a key strength of the CRC Program is as a mechanism for research to address short-term focused industry or public good problems, with particular emphasis on participation by small-to medium-sized enterprises and service industries.

 

The report recommends that the prime objective of CRCs be to support pre-competitive research ventures that address, for example, a significant challenge where the risk involved in solving the challenge is too great for a single firm to tackle alone.

 

An expansion of the program to cover broader research issues, with more flexible funding and governance arrangements has been welcomed by industry. Issues from public good through to commercialisation are to be examined using wider research approaches, including the humanities and social sciences.