The McGreens program is an initiative created in 2007 to address the growing needs within our sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our clients’ commercial properties. With a corporate goal of becoming a leader in green building management and industry experts in energy efficiency, McGees Brisbane had launched this new initiative.
Our research revealed that the way you choose, design and manage your workplace can help you to enhance your reputation, attract and retain talented people, enhance wellbeing and productivity, compliment and protect organisational knowledge, reduce liability and increase profitability. The only way we could achieve this was to create a win/win situation for our clients and our tenants.
It is fair to say our breakthrough came in 2010 when we were successful in obtaining three government grants from the Federal Government’s ‘Green Building Fund’ on behalf of our clients. Our most rewarding project was 67 High Street Toowong in which we significantly improved the NABERs rating (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) by reducing the amount of energy consumed. We also shared this experience with a number of talented young students at BOND University School of Sustainable Development who worked with us and our program partners, NettZero.
In short, we:
- Project managed the retro-fitting or retro-commissioning of existing buildings
- Reduced energy consumption (measured outcomes)
- Improved NABERs rating significantly
- Promoted green management of leases and tenant land lord collaboration, and
- Delivered this to our sector in the most cost effective way.
In November 2011 the government had made legislation to enforce the disclosure of the energy efficient rating when selling, leasing or sub leasing office space with a net lettable area of 2,000m2 or more. We anticipate that this is the start of things to come and will spread across the retail industrial and other property sectors.
