Future leader leaves a legacy

Future leader leaves a legacyA lot of hard work, a bit of luck and many inspiring colleagues and clients are the secret to success of this sustainability professional, Future Leader of the Year Joe Karten.Built’s sustainability manager, Karten took home the du Chateau Chun Award for Future Leader of the Year at the Property Council of Australia / Rider Levett Bucknall Innovation & Excellence Awards on Friday night.”Exhilarating” is how Karten describes winning the award. “The calibre of people put forward was so high that I was surprised to be a finalist,” he says modestly.In a field where Australia is itself a world leader – the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark has named Australia’s property industry the world’s greenest for six years in a row – Karten is carving out a reputation for excellence.Since joining Built in 2012, Karten has led Built’s sustainability efforts on more than 10 Green Star projects, exceeding client requirements on several sustainability showcases.Karten studied in the United States, before winning the first Victor Regnier Travelling Fellowship in 2006. It was during a volunteer stint at the Mexico Green Building Council that he was talent-spotted by Australia’s fledgling council.Landing in Australia in 2007, Karten cut his teeth with the Green Building Council of Australia as a technical coordinator and curriculum developer, contributing to the evolution of Green Star standards.”Working at the GBCA gave me years of experience understanding how to apply and implement sustainability initiatives in an Australian context,” he says.Karten says building a company’s capabilities in sustainability isn’t something that happens overnight. “It takes years of slow and steady work.”He says “being in the right place at the right time” has played a role in his career, as has hard work and learning from experiences. He’s also benefited from the opportunity to learn from “forward thinking and intelligent people – both colleagues and clients”.”Underpinning all of this, I’ve found something I’m really passionate about. And that’s what I recommend to everyone starting out in the industry – whether it’s sustainability or quality or profitability, find something that matters to you and put your energy into it.”You don’t need to win a national award to be happy in your job, because you’ll love what you do.”He points to his work on 20 Martin Place as a highwater mark.”It’s a fantastic building. Our initial objective was a 5 Star Green Star rating, but we found a pathway to get to 6 Star Green Star As Built. We were able to do it without additional cost to the project.”The $100 million project features one of the first large-scale commercial office roll outs of LED lighting – with very low energy consumption of 1.33 watts per sqm going beyond the most stringent Green Star requirements.And by delicately stripping back the asbestos-laden 1970s facade during the demolition process, Karten’s team was able to retain the valuable steel frame. This required careful management, but saved more than 1,0 tonnes of structural steel from being scrapped. Karten rattles off a list of other favourite projects, from AGL’s office fitout in Sydney – another elevation from 5 to 6 Stars through hard work – to City of Sydney’s Town Hall House, a beautiful new 5 Star fitout within the brutalist 456 Kent St building. He’s particularly proud of his work on the St George’s fitout in Barangaroo, which has the distinction of being the first bank branch in Australia to achieve a Green Star rating. “We had a very short design program and even shorter 46 day – and night – construction program. We worked hard to raise the rating from 5 to 6 Star and deliver a beautiful flagship bank branch,” he says.Karten is currently working on a swag of impressive projects, including 105 Phillips Street in Parramatta for Dexus, Barrack Place in Sydney’s CBD for Investa and the Uniting Communities’ $80m mixed-use tower in Adelaide, featuring independent living units, specialist short and long-term disability respite accommodation, office tenancy space, and ground level retail.While his birth country of the United States generates thousands of green-rated buildings each year, Australia has a higher number of certified projects per capita, and Karten thinks there is a reason for this.”Partnership creates strength,” he says.Pointing to the many collaborations throughout the industry – from Sydney’s Better Buildings Partnership to the annual Green Cities conference hosted by the Property Council and Green Building Council of Australia – he says these “formidable partnerships” bring the industry together in ways unseen in other parts of the world.Another of these partnerships is the Responsible Construction Leaders Group, of which Karten has been a long-term contributor. “We are all contractors with hard dollar tender bids against each other, yet we can come together in a collaborative group to create tools that we can share with the industry and make it better,” he says.As for the future, Karten is optimistic.”It feels like we are at the forefront of something exciting,” he says.”We are realising the benefits of an aligned and collaborative market. By sharing our ideas across company lines, we are creating a strong construction industry for everyone.”We’re creating high quality buildings, and the legacy we all leave – which is what it’s all about at the end of the day – will be a better one.”