Insights, clarity and action - Green Building Day is coming to your city

30 Apr 2025

When the path to achieving sustainable buildings feels uncertain, Green Building Day brings clarity, community and practical momentum.

Creating a more sustainable built environment means stepping away from the status quo and that path can sometimes feel unclear. As those in sustainability know well, being the change can feel like a long, hard, uphill walk. When the road ahead looks foggy, surrounding yourself with others who have been on the journey can offer the guideposts you need to move forward.

Green Building Day is where those connections happen. Designed for anyone working on, or planning to be part of, a Green Star project, it’s a chance to build your knowledge, gain confidence, and learn from others who are making sustainability happen on the ground.

There’s real power in bringing like-minded, passionate people together, especially when the need for action has never been greater. But while the conversations are important, so is learning how to apply best practice and implement tangible solutions to a project.

Off the back of Transform 2025, Green Building Day puts the big picture thinking into practical and actionable steps.

Whether you are in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney, the Green Building Council of Australia team is coming to you to facilitate conversations on best practice and practical solutions to help your teams achieve greater sustainability outcomes on your Green Star project.

What to expect

Engaging case studies, question time, and opportunities to talk to project teams who have done it all before.

Each city, starting with Brisbane, will have a tailored agenda with themes including:

Circular procurement and opportunities for responsible material use
Understanding the complexities of refrigerants
Pathways and innovations in embodied carbon.

You’ll also hear from the people behind local Green Star projects — sharing practical takeaways, lessons learned, and insights that can help shape your next move.

Brisbane, Turrbal Country, 20th May

Kicking off the Green Building Day tour is Brisbane, where GBCA staff including CEO Davina Rooney, and Taryn Cornell, Senior Manager of Strategy and Development, will be giving Green Star updates and talking through case studies from Green Star projects that not only excel in efficient and sustainable operation, but are examples of renewal and reuse in the built environment.

You can look forward to a host of case studies, including one on the largest waterfront urban renewal precinct in Queensland, North Shore Hamilton precinct, presented by Mott McDonald’s, Dr Anne Kovachevich.

Check in to Brisbane

Adelaide, Kaurna Country, 28th May

Our second stop is Adelaide where GBCA’s Elham Monavari, Head of Green Star Delivery, will chair the day and be joined by project leaders to break down high performing Green Star projects from a technical perspective.

Among the topics to be discussed is Adelaide’s largest future-focused business precinct, 60 King William Street, presented by Emma Clark, Design Manager at Built. This case study will be an in depth look at the building designed to be one of Adelaide’s first carbon neutral buildings with a 6 Star Green Star Performance rating.

Melbourne, Wurundjeri and Bunurong Country, 3rd June

Next up is Melbourne where the GBCA team including Chief Impact officer, Jorge Chapa and CEO Davina Rooney will continue to bring insights to our Victorian audience. Together with industry they will address Victoria’s energy transition, innovation to net zero, and case studies showcasing Green Star projects that elevated what it means to be ‘future proofed’.

A key highlight will be the exploration of 90 Melbourne Drive. Presented by Anthony Osborne, Senior Development Manager at Stockland, the Melbourne Business Park is elevating the benchmark for sustainability and performance in logistics. Receiving a 5 Star Green Star Buildings rating, the first for a Stockland logistic project, Melbourne Business Park is an all-electric industrial site that encompasses low waste from design to build.

Keen to hear more about this project and more? Head to Melbourne.

Perth, Whadjuk Noongar Land, 11 June

On the 11th of June we are coming out West for the second last leg of the Green Building Day tour. Davina Rooney, CEO, and Jorge Chapa, Chief Impact Officer, will host the event specifically looking at sustainable development in WA infrastructure and green building trends through local and global eyes. You can expect a range of exciting new cases studies that put all the big picture thinking into action, including an exploration of Murdoch Place with Ben Rees, Principal at Hassell Studio. A project designed for social and community outcomes; this session will explore what made this sustainable mixed-use community such a success.

Ready to join us, Perth?

Sydney, Gadigal Land, 26th June

Our last stop is Sydney, where we will also have virtual attendance available. You will see all the familiar faces on the final leg of the tour, including Elham Monavari, Jeff Oatman, Davina Rooney – to name just a few. They will join key industry members to discuss the latest tools and initiatives for reducing embodied carbon, reframing fitouts to reduce waste and more, with a few special Green Star updates along the way.

The day will cover a range of case studies, including a discussion on First Building, Bradfield City Centre, by Jeff Morgan, Principal at Hassell Studios, and Lucy Sharman, Director of Sustainability at Bradfield Development Authority. Informed by Indigenous narratives of Country from Djinjama, First Building is an outstanding example of how to utilise a combination of materials that are low-impact and enable disassembly, being entirely designed as modular kit-of-parts.

Let’s turn those ideas into green projects - join us in Sydney.