This year marks a milestone in many areas. One of those is our Sustainability Awards, which after 12 years of recognising and rewarding the AEC industry for it efforts, in 2018 have finally come of age.

The reason I say that is two-fold. Firstly, after many years, these awards have very much become part of the social calendar of the architecture and design sector. I know this as many have commented to me how important it was not only to be nominated for our awards, but also how significant their peers in the industry found the fact they were nominated in the first place.

Secondly, and perhaps in a somewhat more shallow sense, the relocation of the awards to The Star in Sydney marked a beginning of the Sustainability Awards journey into a far more public, and dare I say, glamorous universe, and one that allows the gravitas of this event to be fully and loudly celebrated by all those involved.

Anyone who was there this year would be well aware, that now our awards have hit a critical mass from which the only way is up – straight to the stratosphere that is.

And this is not just for reasons of vanity or glib promotion. One look at how much the need for sustainability has permeated all industries provides a lucid vista into its pivotal societal importance.

Just as one example from as late as this week, professional services giant PwC pledged to source 100 percent renewable electricity for its global operations and to offset all emissions accounted for by flights taken by employees for business purposes.

The multinational company, which has operations in 158 countries and more than 236,000 employees, recently joined The Climate Group’s RE100 initiative to source 100 percent clean power for its global operations – an aim it has committed to achieve by 2022 across its 21 main territories, which account for 88 percent of its revenue streams.

“We believe business has a key role to play in solving societal challenges alongside other stakeholders,” PwC’s global chairman Bob Moritz says, adding that, “This commitment is for us a recognition of the need to accelerate the pace of change, and individual business commitments, collectively, will make a critical difference to that.”

This is where the issue of sustainability currently sits across the broader corporate sector and as such, is the reason why we, as a company that reports on a part of industry that contributes up to 35 percent of all landfill waste want the issue of sustainability to become the central theme of everyone’s daily business routine.

But we still have some way to go yet.