The Green Building Council of Australia has established a new committee to create stronger links with the Asia-Pacific region and promote the benefits of sustainable green building practices.
The new Asia-Pacific Committee will be chaired by Daniel Grollo, chief executive officer of Grocon and member of the GBCA’s board of directors. The committee will include high-level representatives from GBCA member companies and will work closely with Austrade.
“The committee will collaborate with GBCA members to create ties in Asia to
support the acceleration of green building in the region. We will be looking at
developing education, products, technology and corporate opportunities with
interested Asian companies to provide new opportunities both in Asia and
Australia,” Mr Grollo says.
The World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) has appointed an Asia-Pacific
regional manager, Trudy-Ann King, who will be supporting emerging green
building councils in the region by developing a WorldGBC Asia Pacific Network to
link the activities in the region, as well as work with each country individually. King
will undertake this role in conjunction with her responsibilities as GBCA state
manager for Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. King also manages the
GBCA Asia Pacific Committee.
“Our preliminary cooperative efforts have focused on sharing the knowledge we
have developed both in Australia and internationally, as well as organising
building tours for our Asian colleagues,” she explains.
“We are active in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia, and have exchanged
missions and information with India and China to improve our understanding of
local needs and how learnings from the transformation in our own market might
usefully be adapted to those local conditions.”
According to the chief executive Romilly Madew, the GBCA hopes that the Asia-
Pacific Committee will eventually lead to a network that enables all regional and
emerging councils to meet regularly and exchange information.
“We are optimistic that there will be support for the adaptation of rating tools to
local conditions, the ability to undertake demonstration projects, to offer training
and staff exchanges and to support the development of regulatory frameworks
and other sustainability assessment tools,” Madew says.
