Our CR&S Approach

Residential and Retirement Living

Our evolving Residential sustainability policy

Our Residential sustainability policy was launched in June 2008, approved by the Residential management group. The policy requires every project to implement a minimum compliance standard and also provides advice on best practice and innovation. The policy was communicated to the business in the first quarter of FY09. While there is no formal mechanism to track the implementation of the policy, an informal review completed in February and March 2009 indicated that there was inconsistent application and delivery. This review also identified the need for the Residential business to further develop its understanding and approach to sustainability and to engage with stakeholders to prioritise the business's most important social, economic and environmental issues. At this time, our Residential business encompassed our Retirement Living business.

The Residential sustainability policy is now being revised and includes objectives and actions that are included in the performance management role accountabilities for business development and acquisition managers, development managers, design managers, marketing managers and sales employees.

Developing the Residential sustainability strategy

To develop our Residential sustainability strategy, we conducted more than 35 formal interviews in February and March 2009. These interviews were held with internal stakeholders, including the CEO, design managers, development managers and customer-facing employees from all levels of the business. The list of potential sustainability focus areas was also tested with external stakeholders, including a builder, a consultant and a government representative. We also undertook a review of customers' perceptions of our performance.

In response to these challenges a sustainability strategy identifying our areas of focus and action was developed in the first half of 2009. Our sustainability policy setting our minimum standards and 'beyond compliance' aspirations was revised to be consistent with the strategy.

As part of our strategy developments, the four sustainability priority areas identified as most material to our stakeholders and business were:

• Society: Our role in contributing to a strong, vibrant, healthy and economically viable society. This includes our role in housing affordability, economic contribution and job creation,
• Community development: The soft and hard infrastructure that creates a sustainable community,
• Climate change and energy: Our energy management approach and our current and future climate change impact,
• Natural resources (water and biodiversity): Our water management approach and our impact on biodiversity through developments.

The sustainability strategy also includes a focus on stakeholder engagement, improving our sustainability communications, delivering consistent operating standards and embedding sustainability into our operations. These priorities were approved by the Residential management group and the CR&S Board Committee in May 2009.

Progress against the priority areas in the strategy will be tracked through monthly reporting to the Residential management group. We are developing project reporting standards to track our performance. A pilot form of this project reporting has been implemented for this report, allowing us to establish a performance baseline.

Residential and Retirement Living information in this report

Information on the first two priority areas, society and community development, can be found in this report in the community development and housing affordability sections. Information on customer satisfaction and our spend on suppliers is detailed in the customers and suppliers section.

The climate change and energy section summarises our estimated energy use and greenhouse gas emissions and includes information on how we are working with specialists on researching risks associated with flooding, storm surge and sea level rise.

In the natural resources section there is water consumption data for our residential communities, apartments and retirement living villages and information on how we are managing biodiversity impacts.

All the Residential and Retirement Living data provided in this report was collected in July 2009 and covers FY09. Our Residential CEO and relevant general managers nominated data owners in their business to collect and report sustainability data for the reporting period. The data was collected for 66 residential community projects, nine apartment projects and the four retirement living projects that we determined we had operational control for under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (NGERA). An information management system was used to create online forms that were sent to the data owners. These forms provided definitions and guidance on the data collection process and methodologies.