Natasha Mulcahy has won a Women in Sustainability Award at the 2019 Sustainability Awards.

The award honours women who have made a significant contribution to the built environment industry in Australia over the past five years.

“For the past 13 years Natasha has worked across government and private industry, delivering projects with triple bottom line outcomes. She is both an inspiration and an example of what can be achieved with passion, skill and a laser-like focus on sustainable outcomes,” says Architecture & Design editor Branko Miletic.

Mulcahy is the sustainability manager for West Village, a $1 billion urban renewal project in Brisbane’s West End. She was instrumental in the negotiation of sustainability requirements with the government and has driven all the precinct’s sustainability initiatives. As a result, the project received a 6 Star Green Star Communities rating – the highest recognition for a master-planned precinct in Australia.

Some of West End’s sustainable features include the delivery of social infrastructure (arts/community space, green space), car share, water recycling, responsibly sourced building materials, construction and operational recycling, and biodiversity programs.

Mulcahy ensured all West Village apartments were designed for thermal comfort, resulting in an average NatHERs rating of almost 40 percent above NCC requirements. This is yielding strong results, with energy usage at just over half the national average for apartments and around one-third of that for equivalent person households in the local area. Mulcahy also spearheaded the project’s commitment to urban heat island mitigation, with a minimum 50 percent of the site area covered in vegetation or other elements to cool the precinct.

Some of Mulcahy’s previous work includes strategic planning for a new university campus, planning for sustainability in the urban growth areas of Ripley Valley and Caloundra, and urban renewal. She was also a facilitator at QLD Girls in Property in 2018, a Property Council program to promote careers in sustainability to young women in high school. Similarly, she has worked collaboratively with Hutchinson Builders to implement the company’s award-winning Indigenous participation program at West Village.