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INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY INTO OUR BUSINESS

Advancing sustainable practices and reporting has been one of Landcom’s annual “top ten” corporate priorities since 2001. Landcom has embedded TBL performance into its decision-making and into the fabric of its business.
Through our projects, we strive to demonstrate benchmarks in our key sustainability guiding principles, which are to:
(1) Deliver a sustainable quality of life.
(2) Conserve resources.
(3) Protect biodiversity.
(4) Minimise pollution.
Our commitment to sustainable development means we endeavour to ensure that our developments, products and services have minimal adverse effect on the environment, the economy or the community in which we operate. Landcom’s objective is to move beyond a “minimum harm” philosophy by adopting practices that add value and enhance community life, the environment and the economy.
For Landcom, the reason for implementing TBL decision-making and reporting was consistent with its corporate vision of “creating better communities”. Apart from achieving increased transparency, increased trust among its stakeholders and an enhanced reputation as a good corporate citizen, Landcom needed to prove its value as a government-owned developer. It sought a clear strategy for delivering measurable public benefits as a way of differentiating itself from the private sector.
Every Landcom project is monitored against sustainability criteria and performance targets through the TBL reporting program. The public reporting of Landcom’s performance against these goals makes the Corporation more accountable by allowing stakeholders to question results, to better understand the constraints that Landcom faces and to challenge the Corporation to strive harder.
Landcom’s journey to TBL reporting has focused the entire organisation not only on its performance, but also on its commitment to sustainability. TBL reporting has made sustainability an integral component of every project. It has become a critical factor in the evaluation of Landcom’s performance as well as that of its staff, consultants, contractors, builders and developer partners.
MAJOR CHALLENGE
Landcom acknowledges that we can and will continue to improve our sustainability performance, but we also know that our business has some impacts for which we have no simple solutions. For example, urban development affects biodiversity. Although we do our best to integrate conservation into our developments, we have to deliver adequate and affordable housing for the people of NSW.
SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS AND PERFORMANCE TARGETS
The indicators selected for TBL reporting are not the only criteria used by Landcom in practising sustainable development. Instead, they are intended to give an overall picture of the potentially significant impacts of our core business. The indicators are subject to regular review to ensure that they remain relevant to our core business.
Landcom’s sustainability indicators were selected with its key stakeholders during an extensive consultation program conducted over 2001 and 2002. The selection was based on the following criteria:
(1) The significance and relevance of the indicator to Landcom’s core business.
(2) Whether the indicator enabled Landcom to demonstrate a change in its performance over time.
(3) The ability of Landcom to exercise direct control or influence over the indicator.
(4) Whether the indicator could be easily understood and communicated.
(5) Whether clear and measurable targets could be developed to illustrate Landcom’s performance against the indicator.
(6) The likelihood of data being readily available to enable the reporting of Landcom’s performance against the indicator and the ability to retrieve accurate and meaningful data from third-party sources (contractors and builders, etc).
Landcom has conducted comprehensive research for a number of the adopted performance indicators so that realistic and measurable targets could be set. These research projects were necessary to ensure that Landcom, while setting tough targets, did not select milestones that imposed an undue burden on its private-sector partners. The research also helped to provide sufficient guidance to the industry on how to deliver desired outcomes.
PRODUCTS AND DELIVERY MECHANISMS
While Landcom is a property developer operating in a commercial environment, it is not a builder. The selection of sustainability indicators against which Landcom measures its performance has been strongly influenced by its business products, the methods Landcom employs to deliver these products and its ability to exercise direct control over the business outcome.
For the purposes of TBL data collection, Landcom projects have been divided into two groups:
(a) Projects where the end product delivered to the consumer is “land”. The majority of this land is sold to the public as individual house lots. Most industrial land is sold to private business interests in the same way. Landcom has little control over the final built form under these arrangements.
(b) Projects where the end product delivered to the consumer is a dwelling (i.e. “built form” projects). Landcom has more control over the built form under these arrangements, in particular when it partners with another developer. Landcom uses this additional control to promote its key sustainability and design objectives.
THE GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an internationally recognised group whose mission is to develop Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (SRG) that are capable of universal application. These guidelines are intended for public corporations wishing to report on the economic, environmental and social dimensions of their activities, products and services. Although the guidelines are expected to be adopted increasingly by government and non-government organisations, there are no sector specific guidelines for property development. This is why Landcom decided to take its advice and guidance on indicator selection from its key stakeholders.
While Landcom’s Sustainability Report is not strictly in accordance with the requirements of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, the Corporation has generally followed the principles and criteria specified by Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. A detailed comparison of Landcom’s TBL indicators against GRI is provided on the enclosed CD-ROM.