by Brianna Crandall — March 25, 2016—A new partnership between the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), the Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA) and the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) aims to push best practice boundaries and accelerate the creation of healthier, resilient, equitable and ecologically restorative building practices.
All three organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding that outlines a commitment to work towards common goals in the high-performance buildings realm in Australia, exploring ways the organizations’ rating systems can complement and reinforce each other and help move the Australian green building industry to the next innovative level.
The GBCA’s chief executive officer (CEO), Romilly Madew, says the commitment outlines work to align relevant Green Star credits and Living Building Challenge (LBC) Imperatives, research to identify gaps between best practice and high-performance buildings in operation, collaboration on events and courses, and promotion of leading practices in Australia. Madew commented:
We are all working towards a common future. By aligning our activities, our rating systems and our efforts, we can drive the adoption of sustainable building practices at a faster pace, and demonstrate the value of a sustainable future. A central part of the partnership will be to identify the connections between Green Star credits and LBC Imperatives, which will help identify a pathway for joint certification. This collaboration will also enable us to explore integrating leading LBC Imperatives into Green Star through our Innovation Challenges.
GBCA and LFIA will deliver a range of events and education programs to provide stakeholders with resources and skills to explore the LBC and Green Star connection points. The groups’ leaders feel that providing a number of pathways recognizes the uniqueness of each project, leading to better outcomes for project teams using either system, and opening up opportunities to use them jointly.
