Organising committee

Tim Grant

Tim is the Director of Life Cycle Strategies and Adjunct Research Fellow with CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research.

A key facilitator in Australia’s shift towards life cycle thinking and environmental assessment, Tim is a founding member and president of ALCAS and the conference chair for the 2015 Conference Series. He is also the chairman of the Technical Committee of the Australia Life Cycle Database Initiative (AUSLCI).

His background in mineral process engineering and waste management consulting led Tim to seek a more rationale science based approach to environmental decision making.

Tim develops and applies LCA with a wide range of companies and organisations, through LCI Database development, software support and tool development. He has also been involved in key LCA studies including CSIRO’s comparison of transport fuels and the LCA of Building and Construction materials for the Building Commission of Australia.

 

David Baggs

David is CEO and Program Director of Global GreenTag Pty Ltd, a world-leading eco-product LCA-based certification and EPD reporting company.

He has been sustainability and eco-product consultant to projects worth more than $60 billion, including 10 Sydney Olympic projects, Sydney’s Green Square Town Centre.

The Global GreenTag Program he developed has nearly 1000 products under certification for nearly 100 companies, including some of the world's most iconic green multi-national groups.

David has been responsible for the development of sustainability policy at for all levels of Government level in Australia and Abu Dhabi's Estidama 'Pearl' rating tool and is a Green Star™ & LEED® AP.

He is the Vice President of ALCAS and was the Inaugural Chair of the Australasian EPD scheme.

 

Rob Rouwette

Rob is the founding director of start2see and currently also holds a position as senior manager with Energetics. His previous roles include research consultant for RMIT University’s Centre for Design and an environmental LCA consultant with INTRON, a Dutch consultancy to the building and construction industry. Rob has a strong background performing LCA studies of construction materials and products, buildings and structures, as well as to inform policy decisions.
Rob was the president of ALCAS from 2013-15, and held an interim board position with the Australasian EPD Programme in the first half of 2015. He is currently active within a number of committees within ALCAS and AusLCI, the national Life Cycle Inventory database for Australia.

 

Richard Haynes

Richard is the founder of eTool, a whole building life cycle assessment (LCA) and design software. A resource engineer with experience in operations, project management, consulting and software design, he worked in the renewable energy, construction, and mining industries in Western Australia, but felt there must be better ways of doing things.

His eTool journey in 2008 on the peak of a Canadian icecap, where he saw firsthand the damaging effects of climate change on the glaciers so he made a promise to change his life and use his full potential to protect the environment.

Since then, Richard has strived to make eToolLCD globally accessible so that low carbon design can be achieved by anyone.

 

Caroline Noller

Caroline is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of The FootPrint Company. Her track record of driving ecological efficiency and sustainability innovation in the real estate sector is recognised internationally. She founded The Footprint Company to provide lower cost access to life cycle assessment to the property industry globally.

Caroline has driven world class sustainability outcomes for real estate companies including Lend Lease, The GPT Group, Australand and CapitaLand.

Caroline is a current board member of the Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society.

 

Jonas Bengtsson

Jonas is a co-founder and Director of the sustainability consultancy firm Edge Environment in Australia and Edge Ambiental in Brazil. He has 13 years professional experience in sustainability consultancy and systems engineering. He has lived and worked in Europe, USA, South America and Australasia. Jonas has serviced public & corporate clients in a range of sectors delivering sustainability advisory, training and life cycle environment, social and cost assessments.

His favourite projects are the ones bringing value to organisations and people by effectively measuring, understanding and managing sustainability based on sound science. Projects he could have worked on, but chose not to, include clean coal methodology development and assessments. There are better uses of our time and resources. Key clients include: Walmart, KFC, Inghams, Schweppes, McCain, George Weston Foods, Australian Ethical Investment, Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Optus and Singtel, and China Merchants Group.

Jonas is the Vice President of the Australian LCA Society, and a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the Australasian Environment Product Declaration Programme.

 

Speakers

Joep Meijer

A US expert in sustainable strategies for the built environment, Joep is the owner and president of The Right Environment in Austin, Texas. He helps clients to define sustainability strategies through life cycle thinking and life cycle assessment methodologies.

Joep has worked for all major building materials and branch associations in Europe, and has developed tools for European DOT’s for sustainable design and purchasing. With almost 20 years experience, he has developed more than a dozen evaluation tools, has drafted national standards on footprinting and has performed LCA studies (including many EPDs) for more than 300 products.

 

Professor Kasun Hewage

Prof. Hewage is a professional engineer with multi-disciplinary project experiences in Canada and international projects. He joined the University of British Columbia, Canada in 2008. Prior to his appointment in UBC, Prof. Hewage worked as a Business Management Cost Specialist in the Albertan Oil and Gas industry. He has also worked as a civil engineer in hydropower and infrastructure development projects. Prof. Hewage has been leading several research projects in lifecycle assessment, green construction, clean energy, and sustainability. Prof. Hewage has widely published his research in reputed technical journals and conference proceedings.

 

Nicole Sullivan

Nicole is Technical Manager, Sustainability for BlueScope leading the development of a set of EPDs for BlueScope’s Australian products, including the publication of the first Australian EPD registered under the Australasian EPD Programme in June this year.

Her background in chemical and process engineering combined with industrial experience has provided her with the ability to understand, interpret and simplify technical manufacturing information.

Nicole’s work was awarded the worldsteel “Steelie” Award for Excellence in LCA and the BPN Sustainability Award for Innovation of the Year. She is a member of the Australasian EPD Programme Technical Advisory Group and a member of ALCAS. She currently sits on the Australian ISO mirror committees EV-005 (LCA) and EV-015 (GHG), is part of an ISO/IEC Joint Working Group developing a new standard on Environmentally Conscious Design, and works actively within the worldsteel LCA Expert Group.

 

Nigel Howard

Nigel has held influential positions in the US, UK and Australia and consults to a wide range of companies, governments and NGO’s.

In Australia, Nigel managed the Building Products Life Cycle Inventory project to establish a national consensus methodology and database of consistent LCA data for the building materials and products industries.  For the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Austalia, he developed the LCA based Materials Calculator and the Materials and Resources credits for the Infrastructure Sustainability IS rating tool.

He originates from the UK, where as Director of the Center for Sustainable Construction, Nigel completed the BRE environmental profiles methodology resulting from a 10 year long consultation with 24 building product sectors. From this basis he developed the UK Green Guides to Specification for Commercial buildings and Homes. He was responsible for the BREEAM98 building rating tools and pioneered the launch of ECOHomes. In prior roles he worked for Davis Langdon Consultants, for the Building Research Energy Conservation Support Unit, British Gas and the Greater London Council’s Scientific Branch.

Before coming to Australia Nigel was Vice President for the US Green Building Council, responsible for developing, implementing and establishing the suite of LEED building environmental rating systems from a single Commercial Buildings pilot. He was also responsible for establishing the LEED Accredited Professional training programs and credentials.

 

Stephen Mitchell

Stephen is the Principal of environmental consultancy Stephen Mitchell Associates. He has 19 years’ experience in environmental management – the past nine years as Sustainability Programme Manager with a timber industry association where he co-authored 5 EPDs for Australian timber products.  These are registered with the Australasian EPD Programme and were the first Australian EPDs that met the industry-wide EPD criteria of Green Star.

He is currently a director of the Australasian EPD Programme, a member of ALCAS and has a Masters in Environmental Management.

Stephen advised Planet Ark on timber’s carbon footprint to inform their Make it Wood campaign and has initiated and conducted numerous timber end-of-life management projects for governments and industry via the National Timber Product Stewardship Group. He has also worked on various materials reuse and recycling projects for the NSW Government and a local NGO.

 

Simon Renton

Simon is currently the Project Manger for Climate Change (Mitigation and Adaptation) at VicRoads, where he has worked within the environmental area for the past six years. 
As an 'end user' of life cycle information he has been responsible for researching and integrating this into VicRoads procurement and construction processes. 
He coordinated the project for the development of the Transport Authorities Greenhouse Group (TAGG) whole of life greenhouse methodology and subsequent Carbon Gauge tool, which have been adopted by the Australian and New Zealand Transport authorities as the default greenhouse estimation methodology for road construction projects. He has also recently finalised the development of a rail grade separation greenhouse estimation tool. 

 

James Logie

James an LCA consultant at Edge Environment with previous international experience working in Denmark and Sweden. James has worked across a wide range of sectors, including construction, infrastructure, food and consumer goods, property, and packaging. James has delivered LCA projects under the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star rating tools, including for 333 George St, The Ponds Retail Centre, and the Chadstone Office Tower. James is also currently working on developing EPDs for a number of clients under the Australasian EPD Programme. James undertook his master’s thesis in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen and SCA Hygiene Products, Europe's largest private forest owner and world's second largest hygiene product company. The thesis aimed to quantify biogenic carbon flows and climate impact associated with bio-based products in LCA. James is a member of the ALCAS Impact Assessment Committee and helped co-author the recent Best Practice Guide to Life Cycle Impact Assessment in Australia. 

 

Usha Iyer‐Raniga

Associate Professor Usha Iyer‐Raniga is Deputy Head, International at the School of Property and Construction Management, RMIT University. She is also Director of the Sustainable Buildings Innovation

Lab (SBiLab) at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management, dealing with research on thermal comfort, energy efficiency, life cycle assessment and sustainability in the built environment. Recently, Usha has been appointed lead/co lead the Sustainable Buildings and Construction (SBC) Programme under the 10YFP Framework on Sustainable Consumption and Production for the United Nations. She is also leading a flagship project under the SBC Programme.

Usha’s primary interest is in sustainability of the built environment, in achieving practical solutions to ensure sustainable outcomes for the users of the built environment. She brings cross disciplinary and project management experiences to her teaching and research.

Usha is a reviewer and scientific committee member for national and international referred journals and refereed conferences. She is on the editorial board for two refereed journals and has been a board member of the not‐for‐profit Alternative Technology Association (ATA) in Australia since 2009.

 

Dr Dominique Hes

Dominique is an academic at the university of Melbourne Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning; she has degrees in Science, Engineering and a PhD in Architecture. She started off her career as an LCA consultant for PRe Consultant in the Netherlands. This was followed by working at the Centre for Design with Tim Grant. Through her PhD her direction shifted to the built environment and the use of life cycle thinking, and more detailed LCA where appropriate.  Throughout her 25 years of working, learning and practicing in the sustainability field, she has asked the question why given all the effort being put into sustainability are we becoming more unsustainable, with most ecological and social indicators in decline. Though not resolved this question resulted in the book Designing for Hope: pathways to Regenerative sustainability, which investigates both the reason for our lack of progress towards sustainability and presents projects and approaches that are starting to address this.

Dominique is the current winner of the Deni Green, Bob Brown courageous environmentalist award, national citation award winner for teaching, on the site planning committee for CERES and convenor of the Melbourne Collaborative group looking at positive futures in the built environment.

 

Tiange Jack Lu

Jack is a doctoral candidate doing research in Centre for Advanced Composite Materials, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Auckland. He obtained his bachelor degree from Tianjin University in China and his master degree from University of Auckland. 

Currently, his research is mainly about how to apply LCA to plastics and composites manufacturing process. He has been paying great effort to explore how to produce the materials in a sustainable manner with high-quality.  

 

Karl Desai

Karl is a Technical Manager at the Green Building Council of Australia. Most recently he has been working on the synthesis of Life Cycle Assessment within Green Star rating tools. These recent developments open up LCA to the well established market of Green Star projects throughout Australia.

Where the new generation of Green Star rating tools provides users with a best practice framework for holistically assessing sustainability impacts in the built environment, the principles of LCA add a deeper layer of understanding these impacts. The implementation of LCA into Green Star involved extensive industry engagement, refinement of technical requirements and ongoing assistance to project teams who might be undertaking LCA for the first time. This has resulted in valuable insights into the successes and improvements required in encouraging LCA.

With a Masters in Sustainable Development, Karl recognises the need to consider broad reaching sustainability impacts beyond a project’s immediate site. With a drive to continue working towards a more sustainable property industry, through the Green Star suite of rating tools, Karl hopes to see the continued success of LCA in the Australian market.

 

Delwyn Jones

Del is a Director of The Evah Institute that develops LCA for ecolabels, reports, ratings and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for building, cleaning and personal care product.

In 2010, Evah developed Australia’s first 3rd party certified ISO 14025 compliant EPDs and the next 65 thereafter.

In Simapro 8, Boustead 6 and LCADesign® software, Evah’s Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases each have >5500 supply-chain-specific recipes for brands and BAU product.

In 2015, Evah’s Life Cycle Benefit Analysis for ecopositive development was recognised by leading international building researchers as the first net positive design LCA published. Del’s Banksia Awards were for applying LCA in NSW Supply, Sydney Olympics and Sustainable Asset Management. She developed the multi-award winning Sustainable Office Guideline and the owners brief for Australia's first 5 star Greenhouse Office Building.

Del led LCI development for LCADesign building software in Australia with CSIRO, in California with Stanford University; in Holland with KPMG and in Germany with Construction Innovation partners. Evah’s new LCI database for South Africa is now underway.

 

Scientific Committee members

•Paul Antoine Bontink

•Delwyn Jones

•Nicole Sullivan

•Fabiano Ximenes