For the last two years, selected new developments in the UK have been replicating approaches that have driven the prime office market in Australia for over a decade. Performance outcomes are set from early design, buildings are engineered so that their base building energy use is measurable and achieving the target rating is business critical. As a result, new offices there on average use half the energy they did in 2002, and the best one-fifth.

In a virtuous circle, corporate tenants pay a premium for a better rated building – it is deemed to be better designed and constructed, and better maintained and operated. The promise is also a better indoor environment, likely higher staff productivity and reduced absenteeism, lower overall costs of occupancy and an end to wasteful plant oversizing.

At this ESG workshop, join speakers Robert Cohen from Verco, who leads the pilot studies, and Sarah Ratcliffe, the Better Buildings Partnership programme director, to hear how better performing new buildings bring ‘green alpha’ to developers and investors, could enhance the UK’s competitiveness in a global market for investment flows and location choices and directly support the Paris Agreement. Debate how Design for Performance can be included in the next update of the BCO Guide.