Brendon Dwyer takes over the reins as New Zealand Green Building Council Board Chair after being formally voted in at the February board meeting. He has been acting chair since Steve Aschebrock retired from the board late last year.
The General Manager of Building Services at Beca, Brendon has been involved in shaping the NZGBC and the tools since our inception in 2006.
“I was part of the early stages of shaping client engagement with NZGBC. Having been a BREAM assessor in the UK, I was able to provide that context as we were establishing in 2006. So, I’ve had an involvement since effectively day one.”
After years involved in Green Star projects and feeding into the NZGBC, Brendon joined the board in 2017 and has been chair of the Finance and Risk Committee.
“One of the things I love about the New Zealand environment is we’re actually a relatively small group. You have quite a small number of organisations covering quite a large proportion of the industry so you can be influential and champion change. What I love, and I think is a huge opportunity for the Green Building Council, is we’ve taken a very strong leadership position and the industry now looks for it.”
He says he’s excited about the opportunities we have to make a difference.
“I think we’ve got a sympathetic society. People want to do the right things and there is a genuine enthusiasm and broad support from the industry to continue to enhance our performance in this sector.”
Leading a team of building and sustainability engineers across 21 cities in six different countries, Brendon has the opportunity to see how others are navigating the path to zero carbon.
“In Aotearoa, as a society we’re actually quite holistic in our thinking on sustainability.
“There’s a lot of aspirations in various jurisdictions, everyone’s got their plans for net-zero. One of the areas I think New Zealand has a real opportunity to take a leadership role in is the embodied carbon space. We’re thinking about that much more broadly across our portfolio of developments.”
Going forward he believes the board has a key role in feeding back market sentiment to the NZGBC, and helping facilitate engagement with the wider sector.
“I’d like to see us as a strong and active enabler. We have an oversight function, and that’s important from an independence and governance perspective, but, we should aim to be perceived as an enabler who carries out that function, rather than an auditor who holds up standards.”
“We have a strong and diverse member base and I’m keen to see this being increasingly active. Listening to our members and encouraging them to be active will give us better insight and information. This in turn will see us purposefully advocating and engaging with Government and the broader industry, whilst carrying the voice of our members authentically.”