Green Buildings Alive

Green Buildings Alive is an online community for anyone sharing an interest in how to make buildings run well with lower environmental impact. An initiative of Buildings Alive Pty Ltd, it provides a forum for discussion and insights from the field of active energy and environmental management in buildings.

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Green Buildings Alive exists to foster transparency and inform debate around what approaches are most effective in tackling resource and energy use in buildings. The site shares real data and stories from the sector to help reach these goals. We invite comments, ideas, data and data visualisations from anyone and everyone who has an interest in making buildings perform better.

Buildings Alive Pty Limited

Buildings Alive was formed on 1 November 2012 to provide an independent energy efficiency information service for building owners and operators. Its innovative social learning framework combines automated energy analytics, facilitated peer to peer learning environments, online resources and tailored analysis and benchmarking services. These services fit into the daily routine of building managers and are helping to cut greenhouse gas emissions from over 750,000m2 of office accommodation every day.

Green Buildings Alive and the Pulse tool were initially sponsored and developed by the Investa Sustainability Institute. Investa’s rights were transferred to Buildings Alive Pty Ltd in October 2012 and it retains no ownership or proprietary interest in the venture.

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Our contributors

Buildings Alive Team

Jesse Steinfeld

Jesse Steinfeld

Engineering Manager | Buildings Alive

Jesse is a director and co-founder of Buildings Alive and is responsible for the company’s service delivery platform. Previously he worked as a sustainability engineer for Investa Property Group, focusing on identifying, analysing and implementing resource efficiency opportunities across the Investa portfolio. Jesse graduated from the degree of Renewable Energy Engineering in 2009 on completion of an honours year thesis on peak demand management in Sydney office buildings.

Posts by Jesse Steinfeld

Anna Lancaster

Services Administrator | Buildings Alive

Anna is originally from the UK and graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2007 with a BA in Mathematics and Management. Anna began her career as a valuation assistant for a company called Surrenda Link. Throughout her time here, her role evolved becoming more client focused. She furthered her experience in customer service and administration by working for both Bank of America and Foremans LLP. Taking some time out from her career, Anna travelled to Australia where she met her partner and eventually decided to settle down here and build her new future. Anna furthered her studies by completing a course in Business Management when she first arrived in Sydney and will be using this to help Buildings Alive move forward.

Posts by Anna Lancaster

Mitra Bahadorian

Systems and R&D Engineer | Buildings Alive

Mitra began her career in 2004 as a system and control engineer in building automation with Pars Arc in Tehran, Iran. She worked on system and control design/implementation on a number of prestigious projects including The Tehran Tower, a 52-storey residential/commercial building with more than 2500 control points. She obtained a Master’s degree in systems control and robotics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden in 2007. This also included completing her Master Thesis at the prestigious École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) University, Switzerland. Her Master’s Thesis project was on design of a control algorithm for automatic localization and tracking of odour sources by robotic systems. She submitted her PhD in systems and control at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney in 2012, on design and development of a novel predictive and robust control algorithm with applications in mobile robotics. The results of her research have been presented in a number of prestigious international conferences. Mitra will be spending her time at Building’s Alive working on new and exciting research, assisting in the companies further development.

Posts by Mitra Bahadorian

Tsiry Randria

Building Service Engineer | Buildings Alive

Tsiry graduated with a Master of Engineering in Building Design and Construction from INSA, Lyon, France and has since worked exclusively in green building and hands-on energy efficiency solutions. He became a Green Star Accredited Professional (Design and As Built) in 2012. Tsiry started his career as a sustainable design engineer at Inddigo, France, where he contributed to various green building projects in education, commercial, health and residential buildings. He has subsequently worked at Bureau Veritas on over 90 audits in large public buildings acquiring extensive experience within building operation optimisations and energy efficiency solutions. He joins Buildings Alive from DTZ Beyond Green where he was a project manager for sustainable projects, this included carrying out large hotel, commercial and industrial site audits in NSW, NT, and WA. Tsiry will be supporting building operators to reach their building maximum energy efficiency and potential with the Buildings Alive system.

Posts by Tsiry Randria

Baden Hughes

Technology Manager | Buildings Alive

Baden is a director and co-founder of Buildings Alive and is responsible for the company’s technology platform. He has over 18 years of experience working on IT engagements across a range of sectors including electronic publishing, IT/network operations, internet services (ISP/hosting), enterprise information management, software development, strategic and commercial management. In his former roles in academic and industrial research, Baden’s interests have been in the interface between information discovery and delivery systems and the (language) technologies which enable them. He has made contributions in areas such as digital libraries and services, web data mining, computational modelling for human language analysis, statistical natural language processing, computer assisted language learning and empirical software engineering. Baden is a regular speaker at industry conferences on metadata, data management and semantic technologies.

Posts by Baden Hughes
Craig Roussac

Craig Roussac

CEO | Buildings Alive

Craig is a director and co-founder of Buildings Alive and is responsible for the company’s operations and strategic direction. He was previously director of the Investa Sustainability Institute's program of action research for sustainability in the built environment while he was working for Investa Property Group as the general manager with responsibility for the sustainability, safety and environmental management platforms. Craig has a longstanding interest in energy and buildings and is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney in the Architectural Science discipline. His primary research interest is in how technologies and non-technological factors can combine to achieve significant greenhouse gas emission reductions from the operation of buildings.

Posts by Craig Roussac

Dr Serguei Zavtrak

Senior Scientist | Buildings Alive

Serguei has a PhD and DSc in Mathematical Physics from Belarus State University specializing in acoustics and fluid dynamics. He has over 100 published articles in scientific journals and is an author and co-author of 17 patents. In 1992 he became the Deputy Director of Science at U.S.S.R’s Institute for Nuclear Research in Minsk. Throughout his four years here he managed research and development, including many types of measuring equipment for nuclear radiation. He joins the team after working with Oceanlinx, designing and managing the manufacture of various components of wave energy generators, as well as writing computer models for their maximum energy output. Throughout Serguei’s career he has found solutions within a wide variety of industries, including as Senior Scientist and Project Manager for AgResearch in NZ where he developed x-ray technology for food safety and aviation security and in wind turbine engineering for Vortec Energy. At BAE Systems (UK) he worked on a technical solution to the problem of high speed projectiles into liquid fuel tanks. At Buildings Alive he will be responsible for the Research and Development, bringing together new innovative ideas to further the companies’ progression.

Posts by Dr Serguei Zavtrak

Guest Bloggers

Rebecca Short

Rebecca Short

Digital Communications | Green Buildings Alive

Rebecca Short is the Green Buildings Alive web editor and digital promotion coordinator. She specialises in communications about energy and climate change and has worked with government, private sector and non-profits on these difficult issues. Rebecca has experienced first hand the rise of the internet and its role in taking the conversations global when it comes to humanity's future and the business challenges of the 21st Century. Please write to her via the Contact Us page if you would like to collaborate on the Green Buildings Alive initiative, write posts, or tell your employees and members about us.

Posts by Rebecca Short
Beck Dawson

Beck Dawson

Member | Investa Sustainability Institute

Beck Dawson originally trained as an environmental scientist before embarking on careers in science and sustainability communications. She recently returned to Australia from Britain where she was involved in founding the Sustainable Development Unit at the National Museum of Science and Industry and also worked as a consultant environmental specialist to UK business and industry. Beck is head of corporate sustainability at Investa Property Group where she works with all levels of the organisation to integrate long-term strategic thinking into business decisions. Her focus turned to environmental aspects of the built environment and planning while completing a Masters in sustainable architecture at the University of East London and the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales.

Posts by Beck Dawson
Aaron Magner

Aaron Magner

Director, Sustainability | University of New South Wales

Aaron is a guest blogger, from University of New South Wales. He is the director of Sustainability, where he coordinates and promotes sustainability, environmental management & social responsibility initiatives. He is responsible for UNSW’s sustainability strategy, sustainability reporting, environmental law compliance including UNSW greenhouse gas & carbon emission reporting. Aaron holds a Masters of Law (Corporate Law), a Bachelor of Law (Hons) and a Bachelor of Economics, Macquarie University. He is currently completing a Masters in Environmental Management at UNSW. Prior to this role he was legal counsel at UNSW and Deloitte Australia.

Posts by Aaron Magner
Richard DeDear

Richard DeDear

Lead Researcher | University of Sydney Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning

Over the last 28 years, Professor Richard de Dear has built a career in the area of human thermal comfort. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and a dozen books and monographs on the subject. Within that body of research it is his work on the “adaptive model of thermal comfort” that has had the greatest impact, receiving over one thousand three hundred citations within the indoor environmental literature (and earning him an H Index of 20). De Dear’s adaptive model underpins the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers’ thermal comfort standard, and several other national and international standards/codes are now evolving in similar directions, including most recently, the Netherlands and CEN. Countless “green buildings” around the world have been engineered on the basis of the adaptive comfort model, including the landmark San Francisco Federal Building which was completed in 2007. Every year he receives several keynote lecture and visiting professor invitations to conferences or universities, especially across the Asia-Pacific region where his adaptive comfort model has had its greatest uptake.

Posts by Richard DeDear
Shaun Condon

Shaun Condon

Member | Investa Sustainability Institute

Shaun is the Head of Environment and Safety at Investa Property Group and is focussed on the delivery of improved operational performance across Investa’s properties across Australia. Shaun works closely with all levels of the business managing the various environmental programs aimed at lowering Investa’s environmental impact.

Posts by Shaun Condon
Rob Brimblecombe

Rob Brimblecombe

Energy and Water Manager | Monash University

Rob Monash University's Energy and Water manager, a role which includes improving operational efficiency, educating students in the areas of sustainable buildings and renewable energy, and contributing to the development of the University’s sustainability strategy. Rob has a PhD in the field of solar energy, a Bachelor of Applied Science in Energy Studies, and Bachelor of Science (Hons). The Greening Up our Act program at Monash is currenty testing a real-time data feedback system for managing energy.

Posts by Rob Brimblecombe
Christhina Candido

Christhina Candido

ARC APDI Fellow | University of Sydney

Christhina is an architect by training and a researcher by curiosity. She graduated and completed her MPhil in Architecture and Urban Planning at Federal University of Alagoas (Brazil) and recently finished her PhD as a double degree in Civil Engineering at Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil) and Environmental Science at Macquarie University (Australia). Her research focuses on indoor environmental quality and bioclimatic design.

Posts by Christhina Candido
Patrick Crittenden

Patrick Crittenden

Dir, Sustainable Business | University of Technology, Sydney

Patrick is a passionate advocate of collaboration as a means of delivering energy efficiency improvement in business. His interdisciplinary and pragmatic outlook is underpinned by his experience facilitating collaborative workshops and meetings that build momentum for change and lead to measurable business outcomes. He has partnered with university, corporate and government clients on projects that span energy efficiency strategy, training and education, government policy and program development. He is Director of Sustainable Business and is currently conducting PhD research at the University of Technology, Sydney into strategic change practices for energy efficiency in business. Photo: Fiona Livy

Posts by Patrick Crittenden