The devastating fires throughout the Summer of 2019/2020 made it clear that Australian homes need to be ready for future climate disasters. As part of our Green Rebuild Toolkit project, this year we’re focusing on retrofitting existing homes to be more resilient in the face of bushfire. Over four online sessions throughout November we will provide the information that you need to get your home best prepared for fire season. You’ll learn how to make easy changes that you can implement quickly, as well as longer term design improvements to plan for. You’ll hear from fire experts, architects, builders, designers, and homeowners who have first hand experience. Each session will feature a panel discussion and a Q&A hosted by Renew CEO Fiona Gray, so bring along your questions.

Retrofitting for Resilience: Getting started

In this introductory session, we’ll go over the basics of what you need to consider when approaching a bushfire-ready retrofit. Hear from bushfire practitioner Jeff Dau, building designer Mark Davis, as well as Kate Cotter, from the Building Bushfire Council of Australia. This starting point will provide the foundation for the sessions to follow.

Featuring:

Jeff Dau

Jeff is a Bushfire Practitioner with 30 years of experience across a range of fields as a professional in the fire services industry. For the past 12 years this experience has included fire safety engineering, bushfire protection, building certification and regulation and urban planning. Jeff is a Director of EMBER Bushfire Consulting. Other skills include project management, emergency management and leadership. Jeff has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Environmental Science), a Graduate Diploma in Fire Safety Engineering and a Graduate Diploma in Bushfire Protection.

Mark Davis

Mark Davis is an Accredited Building Designer who focuses solely on Sustainable Design and Building. His experience started about 20 years ago when he began building his own sustainable home. Subsequent study and exploration led to his career sharing this passion with others.

Mark has received a number of awards and commendations for his work. He is the Director of Technical Development for the Building Designers Association of Australia and has taught Building Design. His homes have been open to the public for a number of Sustainable House initiatives, to showcase the philosophies.

Mark became a Certified Passive House Designer in early 2019. He now applies this approach to all his projects, as it is the most rigorous and effective tool for designing and building comfortable, healthy and sustainable homes. In his career Mark has presented at a number of conferences & events on Passive House, Condensation Management and aspects of Bushfire Building Design & Construction.

Kate Cotter

Kate Cotter is the CEO of the Bushfire Building Council of Australia (BBCA), which she founded in 2015 to reduce the impacts of bushfire disasters on communities by strengthening the built environment. Applying a systems-based approach to risk mitigation, the BBCA provides independent expertise for governments, industry and communities regarding; public safety policy, building design, legacy property upgrades, community-wide preparedness, new building standards, resilience certification and financing. The BBCA have recently developed a world-first Bushfire Resilience Star Rating project that measures the resilience of properties and provides households with a tailored list of actions to measurably improve the bushfire resilience of their home.

Fiona Gray (Moderator)

Dr Fiona Gray is the CEO of Renew. Fiona has more than 25 years’ experience as a registered practising architect, urban ecologies researcher and local government leader. Her previous roles include Executive Manager of City Design at the City of Ballarat and the Founder and Director of Civic Collective, an urban research and design consulting agency. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre for Regional and Rural Futures at Deakin University and an expert advisor to the Heritage Advisory Committee for National Trust of Australia (Victoria).

Tickets:

This is event is part of Renew's Retrofitting for Resilience series. You can buy tickets to the series here, or an Annual Pass to all extended Sustainable House Day events here.
This event is free for Full Members of Renew. Join up for access to all our events at https://renewportal.org.au
There are a limited number of free tickets to the event for those experiencing financial hardship.
This event is part of our Retrofitting for Resilience event series. You can purchase a series ticket here or an annual pass to all extended Sustainable House Day events here.
Renew depends on the generosity of our community to continue its valuable work. We would welcome your donation here: renew.org.au/donate or via the additional donation option when choosing your ticket.

This project received grant funding from the Australian Government.

This event is also supported by NatHERS, Design for Place, Your Home, Light House Architecture & Science, and Sonnen.