As the creative force at the heart of many of the world’s most prominent built environment projects, Arup has applied their business approach to sustainability within their own office space.
The engineering and design consultancy has achieved a best practice landmark fit-out at their Brisbane headquarters, resulting in a 4 star NABERS Energy tenancy rating. Their efforts have involved equipment upgrades, a lighting retrofit project, embodiment of energy efficiency into company policy, and the implementation of innovative behaviour change programs. For example, the roll-out of a ‘be an energy hero’ poster campaign and the ‘Biggest Energy Loser’ competition, which saw office floors competing with each other to reduce energy consumption, were just some of the initiatives coordinated by the tenancy’s environmental volunteer team to engage staff on the energy efficiency journey.
A number of innovative technical solutions have also greatly assisted in ensuring a correlation between individual actions and overall outcomes. The Arup real-time data visualisation system for instance, allows staff members to directly see their collective energy, water, paper, and carbon emissions from air travel on flat screen displays installed on each office floor. The system also displays information such as the number of computers turned off overnight and has proven to be a great tool for staff to monitor their workplace consumption trends.