WeBuild boosts sustainability team
Italian construction giant WeBuild has hired Joseph Caparrotta in the role of sustainable buildings lead. Caparrotta was most recently principal sustainability consultant at Cundall.
He has also held senior sustainability roles in a variety of other built environment organisations, including Stantec and Wood & Grieve before it was acquired by Stantec, and Northrop. His industry experience also includes stints at Intact Projects, NABERS, BBR and Michael Mobbs Sustainable Projects.
bureau^proberts appoints new strategy chief
Brisbane-based architecture firm bureau^proberts has appointed Amena Reza in the newly created role of head of strategy and operations.
Reza has more than 20 years of experience as a business manager in architectural practices, primarily with ML Design where she began in 1999 as financial controller before progressing to the roles of finance director and partner, and in 2014 became managing director.
She has gained C-suite management experience in a variety of other organisations since 2017, and was most recently deputy chair of the RSPCA Queensland board and a member of the audit & risk committee for Mining3.
Reza has served on bureau^proberts’ advisory board for the past five years, where she was involved in developing the practice’s strategic plan, and said she is now looking forward to bringing the vision to life.
Dexus in new appointment
Sarah Breavington has joined Dexus as general manager, social customer and funds sustainability, after nearly five years at City of Sydney as social strategy manager and previous roles at Mirvac where she was group sustainability manager and Hammerson in the UK.
Sustainability salaries to increase, salary survey says
A survey of over 14,000 employers and professionals has found that 88 per cent plan to increase their salaries in the coming year, according to the 2023-24 Hays Salary Guide.
Seventy-one per cent of those surveyed said they would increase salaries by more than 3 per cent, however with inflation running at 6.8 per cent this is not enough to improve income in real terms. Almost 80 per cent of employers and employees combined believed that pay rises should keep pace with inflation.
The Hays survey found that higher salaries would be offered to sustainability professionals because there remains a skills shortage, but most of the pressure for more pay would come from employees demanding higher salaries, with 65 per cent of professionals planning to ask for a pay rise.
IUCN and Huawei pair up in technology blitz for biodiversity protection
In an incongruous pairing, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Chinese telecommunications group Huawei have released research outlining ways harness digital technology to boost biodiversity protection.
The Smart Protected Areas White Paper authored by the duo sets out a blueprint for using data and digital tools to measure, monitor and protect biodiversity and natural habitats in protected wildlife areas.
Drawing on experience in managing China’s protected areas, IUCN and Huawei initially used cameras to provide the necessary data to track wildlife, but are now expanding to next-generation technologies including cloud computing, IoT and AI to capture images and other information in real-time.
The organisations have also collaborated on the rainforest protection project Tech4Nature in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula which collected more than 30,000 photos, 550,000 audio recordings and video clips of wild animals and an algorithm was developed and trained to identify the different species in the recordings.
Shocking state of affairs for energy sector
The energy sector has no shortage of grey-haired types who have been around the block a few times and seen a lot of previous market upheaval. So it’s telling that 94 per cent of respondents to a GHD-run survey said they believe the current energy crisis is the biggest market disruptor in decades.
The Shocked survey asked energy sector leaders what concerned them most about the energy “trilemma” – the challenge of delivering reliable, affordable and zero emissions energy.
Three-quarters of leaders said security of supply was the number one concern for their organisation and that their industry was under more pressure than any other to decarbonise.
More than three-quarters of respondents said higher energy prices due to the energy transition and geopolitical factors such as the war in Ukraine was reducing the standard of living for customers globally.
Interestingly, 42 per cent said the current market conditions had accelerated their organisation’s net zero plans by an average of five years but 47 per cent said it had forced them to decelerate their plans by an average of six years.