Sustainable construction and renovation - Best Practice

Best Practice

Sustainable Construction sheet [PDF 93KB]

Sustainable construction is about improving processes to minimise resource use (energy, water, materials, etc.) throughout the life-cycle of the structure or building. This framework provides an opportunity to provide input on Charles Sturt University’s existing sustainability processes for construction, renovation and operations, as well as how we manage these into the future.

Importance of sustainable construction and renovation

Buildings are important to how students, staff and the community experience an institution. Whether an office building, laboratory, lecture hall, classroom or student accommodation, a building impacts:

health and wellbeing
the local community and overall landscape and skyline (place making)
the environment (energy, water, waste, travel, procurement, carbon emissions)
a university's reputation
student and staff recruitment and retention.

Champions

What are the Champion's positions and where are they located
Champion	Position	Campus
Steven Mitsch	DFM Director, Division of Facilities Management	Albury-Wodonga
Edward Maher	Manager, Sustainability at Charles Sturt	Wagga Wagga
Therese King	Division Facilities Management	Bathurst
Geoff Gibson	Project Officer, Campus Development	Albury-Wodonga
Brendon Post	Project Officer, Campus Development	Wagga Wagga
Peter Skewes	Energy Manager	Albury-Wodonga
Emma McCormick	Project Manager, Campus Development	Wagga Wagga
Tyson Smith	Operations Manager, North	Bathurst
Rob Englert	Operations Manager, South	Wagga Wagga
Daniel Cameron	Project Officer, Campus Development	Wagga Wagga
Shane O'Brien	Project Officer, Campus Development	Bathurst

Progress towards best practice

This framework was benchmarked in July, 2016.

The below graph illustrates our progress towards best practice across the eight (8) activity areas. The green bars reaching four (4) highlight best practice and the lower bars in blue indicate Charles Sturt’s current ratings.

Vignette: Local constructions have followed Charles Sturt University at Dubbo’s lead

This is significant for Charles Sturt University as we made this decision to be sustainable and we are the first institution in Dubbo to factor sustainability construction and design principles in. Nobody else placed such a high priority on sustainability design principles. This was a fundamental change in thinking in our local community. This fits with universities acting as thought leaders.

Before in Dubbo it was an ‘old school’ attitude and sustainability wasn’t front of mind when designing and constructing large scale building developments. The local council had standard rules that Charles Sturt University had to abide by.

Charles Sturt University was proactive and chose to develop the campus based on sustainability principles. The intention was to be leaders in this space and our buildings won awards for sustainable designs. Charles Sturt University really lead the way.

Following the construction key lessons were learnt about what works and doesn’t work in an inland environment like Dubbo. This was particularly in terms of temperature control. Moderate design solutions for suitable for other climates only work occasionally in Dubbo due to our extreme hot dry climate. The original water cooling systems were replaced with air-conditioners due to our extreme heat. Significant learnings were also made around temperature control and air flow.

What we did here was very unique. Other constructions locally have followed Charles Sturt University’s lead and have endeavoured to incorporate sustainability into building design and constructions."

By Elizabeth Laidlaw, CEC Chair, Dubbo in November 2016.