JLL Perspectives

Measures to mitigate real estate’s impact on the environment are gathering pace, but some managers are struggling to keep up, with confusion around sustainability targets and how to achieve them.

JLL’s Connor McCauley, head of sustainability for Australia and New Zealand, and Anthony Clark, senior director in tenant representation, share the five most frequently asked questions they encountered from real estate professionals when they organised a roadshow around Australia to discuss the financial and social imperatives of sustainability.

“A lot of people don’t understand the difference between carbon neutral and carbon net zero,” Clark says in the podcast.

Meanwhile, McCauley says the basic first step of carrying out an audit on business’s energy and water consumption could be “revealing”, with some businesses discovering they were still paying for bin collections when bins were empty due to increased remote working.

“The cost of an audit hasn't gone up, but energy prices and the cost of waste collection definitely have, so it’s highly recommended.” 

This episode of JLL’s Perspectives podcast is hosted by Rebecca Kent, content director, JLL.

jll.com.au/en/campaign/perspectives-podcast

Universities have been redesigning their campuses and classrooms to suit how people want to teach and learn in the 2020s.

Spaces now accommodate remote and on-site students at the same time, and there’s a greater leaning towards collaborative learning.

Why the changes? What makes an optimal university campus experience in the post-COVID era? And after lockdowns and travel restrictions caused pain for universities globally, what other disruptions could be on the horizon?

Hear from Dinesh Acharya, who heads JLL's higher education consulting business, and David Bruce, space planning and development manager at Monash University.

Host: Rebecca Kent, content director, JLL.

JLL has identified five key themes that will drive real estate investment decisions in 2022. They are where opportunity beckons and where global investors are focusing their strategies as more capital is ploughed into real estate on the back of a record-breaking 2021.

Guests: Andrew Ballantyne, head of research - Australia, JLL, and Fergal Harris, head of capital markets - Australia, JLL.

Host: Rebecca Kent, content director - Australia, JLL

One of the most interesting storylines to have prevailed from the pandemic has been around the phenomenal increase in online shopping and demand for certain products and materials. But two years in, and you might assume the challenges have been overcome, right? Not quite. In the 2021 peak shopping season retailers and other businesses are still apologising to their customers for being out of stock on certain items, or for items reaching them so long after they’d been ordered.

Three experts lift the lid on the hurdles still being faced in the supply chain, logistics and industrial warehousing sectors, including everything from people shortages, to pallet shortages and an undersupply of warehouses.

Guests:

Greg Pike, head of industrial and logistics brokerage, Australia, JLL; Kyle Rogers, co-founder, uTenant and director of supply chain, Supply Chain and Logistics Association, Australia; and Chris Wang, chief operating officer, EWE Group.

Host:

Rebecca Kent, content director - Australia, JLL.

3D technology and its ability to turn numbers on a spreadsheet into objects that leap from a screen is finding more sophisticated applications in real estate.

Digital tools such as building information modelling (BIM), geographic information system mapping (GIS), and lidar scanning, along with platforms such as Matterport, are allowing users to interact with a virtual representation of a building, portfolio or entire city landscape like never before.

Guests Travis Brousseau, GIS lead for JLL in Australia and New Zealand, and Mark Hamilton, JLL's head of digital solutions for the Middle East and North Africa, talk about projects where digital mapping is speeding up decision-making, and supporting industry-wide agendas such as sustainability.

They are interviewed by Perspectives podcast host, Rebecca Kent, content director, JLL Australia.

Over the next decade, the Olympic Games are going to be run a lot leaner.

That includes Brisbane, Australia, which is set to host the event in 2032 at a modest projected budget of A$4.5 billion (US$3.4 bn).

This undercuts the approximately US$10 bn average spent since the 1996 games in Atlanta.

Brisbane's selection as the 2032 Olympics host city, which will be announced just ahead of the Tokyo games, falls under a new approach from Olympic organisers to curb the financial burden of hosting the event, with a drastically more sustainable selection criteria.

It is Brisbane and South East Queensland's growth trajectory and massive infrastructure pipeline (it already has 80% of the infrastructure required for the games) that made the region a compelling contender.

In this Perspectives podcast episode, host Rebecca Kent talks to Mark Stockwell, Australian Olympian, property developer and member of multiple Olympics committees, and Stephen Conry, chief executive - Australia and New Zealand, JLL, who was the director of the Commonwealth Games 2018 board, about what's in store for the region as it prepares itself to host the biggest sporting event in the world.

Investors in build-to-rent residential are looking to take advantage of a subdued apartment market and slower commercial development to secure high density development sites large development sites, driving momentum into a sector that has until now has struggled to gain traction.

The post-COVID opportunity in Australia is comparable to the UK after the Global Financial Crisis put the reins on private apartment development and saw build-to-rent grow into an institutional asset class.

Managers say build-to-rent apartments will transform the renting experience.

Leigh Warner, JLL’s head of residential research, and James Greener, a fund manager in build-to-rent at Investa, explore the sector, and the opportunities further with Perspectives podcast host Rebecca Kent.

The youngest cohort of workers in the corporate sector is helping businesses drive better social outcomes, especially within Australian Indigenous communities.

Corporate spending with Indigenous suppliers is over $900 million compared to $6.3 million 11 years ago. While the catalyst for this growth has been government-imposed spending targets, businesses say they are increasingly finding young ‘champions’ among their workforce eager to find ways to create social impact.

“We are absolutely seeing that the new generation of workers want to work on purpose-driven initiatives,” says Stephanie Roache, sustainability manager at Australia post. “I’ve heard many people from our procurement team say that on the weekend they don’t necessarily want to talk to their friends about the big telco contract they secured at work. They’d rather talk about how they worked with one of their big fleet suppliers to carve out a small contract to give to an Indigenous fleet company, giving them an opportunity to get into the supply chain and grow. That’s giving people a go and makes them feel really good about what they’re doing.”

Businesses aspiring to improve their Indigenous engagement are gradually shifting strategies from spending targets to employment targets. They are also finding ways to support greater Indigenous representation in technical roles, rather than low-skilled roles such as cleaning.

Roache features in this episode of JLL’s Perspectives podcast with Troy Rugless, co-founder of Indigenous-owned PSG Holdings and director of Evolve FM, and Henri Fadli, head of supply chain and procurement, JLL.

Host: Rebecca Kent

Commercial buildings that help reduce carbon emissions or promote healthy employees have increasingly earned certifications for their contributions in recent years.

Now a new certification is aiming to benchmark another indicator of building quality: its smartness.

U.S.-based WiredScore recently launched SmartScore, which aims to bring consensus around the term “smart” in smart buildings, a phrase that has typically denoted sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) used to optimise building systems.

JLL’s Perspectives podcast host Rebecca Kent is joined by Eden Dwek, WiredScore’s director of Expansion, and James Giannikos, an engineer at Australian superannuation fund manager ISPT.

They discuss what makes a smart building, how to prepare a building for future technology, why landlords and tenants need to be prepared for 5G, how untidy building risers can negatively affect the tenant experience and why edge computing is making a comeback.

While a slow return to the office is underway, collaborating virtually remains the norm, with teams often still split between home and the workplace.

It’s highlighted a surprising issue: When it comes to collaborating over software, offices can be seen lagging behind.

Hear more from John Corbett, workplace and real estate strategist at Cisco Systems Inc., and Sonya Alexander, workplace strategist at JLL.