CIBSE is helping to sponsor a series of seminars on the importance of property ‘resilience’, asking questions about whether local buildings are being adequately designed, delivered and operated to enable a controlled response to a crisis.
The quest for “resilience” is a call to action in response to advancing climate change impacts, according to Jeremy Mansfield, a corporate volunteer and head of development at Green Cross Australia.
“Resilience is about the interaction of people, buildings and infrastructure with their local environment climatic conditions,” Mansfield says, adding that ‘building for resilience’ is a critical response to all climate scenarios for communities wishing to adapt and thrive as the climate changes.
Mansfield will lead a series of half-day seminars across Australia and New Zealand in March/April to address the significance of the issue of property resilience, supported by presenters from the insurance and building services industries.
The seminar series has been organised by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), in partnership with Green Cross Australia and supported by a number of other professional and peak body organisations.
“Buildings and infrastructure must have the resilience and flexibility to manage and respond to the impacts of climate change,” Mansfield says.
“Ignoring property resilience will have a long-term detrimental effect on climate change mitigation and community wellbeing.”
Following recent severe weather events such as the 2009 Victorian bush fires and 2011 Queensland floods, key questions arise: are our buildings being adequately designed, delivered and operated?
Do they enable a controlled response and provide a flexible and safe adaption to a crisis or disruption as it unfolds? Will they support a return to normal operations as quickly and efficiently as possible? Will they enable businesses to support community recoveries when major events occur?
Mansfield contends that these issues must be addressed due to our historical approach to standards and codes, which emphasise life/safety and meeting minimum standards.
Under current code objectives, buildings are primarily designed and built to reduce risks to human life, rather than to minimise damage to the building.
“We need to challenge our current premise that a minimum standard is good enough, because it has worked in the past and is what the market desires,” he says.
“The increasing need to cope with adversity in our climate will make redundant those design decisions based on hindsight.”
Mansfield says the case for speeding up the regulatory response is growing as evidence of property sector performance through recent major events grows.
For example, during recent Brisbane floods, the switch rooms in many city buildings exploded when inundated.
“Given that 90 per cent of our buildings are existing stock, how many organisations do a post-disaster audit, rather than just fixing up the obvious damage?” he says. “We need to be anticipating problems that are increasingly likely to manifest in the future.”
Due to the non-retrospective nature of building regulation, the National Code of Construction (formally Building Code of Australia) is not applicable to existing buildings, which form the majority of the building stock.
“Clearly a greater focus will need to be placed on how existing buildings and infrastructure can be made more resilient to the affects of climate change,” he says.
In response to recent extreme weather events, some insurance companies are already withdrawing from ‘high risk’ areas.
Reinsurers are re-evaluating risk frameworks in light of changing risk. Over time this will flow through to general insurers.
In fact, insurers are already developing new tools to evaluate resilience levels for housing. Lending and investment institutions are seeking guidance on how to evaluate risk to assets.
“Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option,” Mansfield says. “We have to shift to a new paradigm by proactively adopting a philosophy of best practice and examining how we can improve assets in terms their continuity, insurability and long-term value.”
According to Green Cross Australia CEO Mara Bun, the present debate focuses on coping with disasters, not on the future.
“The most sustainable building is one that can cope with long-term change,” Bun says.
“This tour aims to catalyse dialogue and action to advance Australia’s property sector resilience.”
The seminar program will consider key issues such as:
Location and access of key building services
Adequacy of redundancy and future availability and reliability of infrastructure
Insurers’ attitudes to risk, building resilience and future claims
Issues uncovered in diligence surveys of buildings that lead to building failure
Risk associated with not informing stakeholders of known building resilience weaknesses.