The Son of a Master Builder Seeking Best Practice
Early beginnings
Growing up around building, Innovation and nature has shaped me. Shaping both my view on the world and what would ultimately happen with my life choices.
Dry Tropics where majority of the planet lives
Living in the dry tropics is a great place to live. Being fully aware of the impact on our environment, the way we live, was my first step towards a passion for designing and building in partnership with the environment rather than at loggerheads.
Along the way I was also involved in lots of business as usual examples inside the world of domestic housing construction. Being in control, either as a manager or directly as the builder point of view, of more than 1,000 new homes. Over time I developed a sense that there were a lot of people losing in the process.
Leading the way
Having spent 15 years in other people’s businesses, I took the leap and started my own company aiming to provide examples of better housing. This just seemed like the right thing to do. We went on to help to improve people’s lives with housing, and successfully won a lot of industry awards in the areas of sustainability and innovation. I was still aware however, that the change we were expecting was not happening in the way that we had anticipated. Showing best practice still was not resulting in customers asking for best practice even when there was no additional cost. Something else was going wrong.
Difficult conversations with myself
This was the genesis of my deep dive into what I knew in my heart was the problem— the people. Not surprisingly this also was the solution to housing the “people”. This journey started on two fronts: trying to understand my own views on housing and my personal psychology. Then pragmatically trying to find ways to impact people’s decision-making around sustainable housing through understanding why we do what we do.
Heading down this path not only ended up with me experiencing a lot of skinned knuckles, but it took me on a journey of discovering what housing might be. Understanding that housing, it is ultimately about a ‘home’. Living this first hand with my wife Jane, as we have watched our twin sons Hunter and Colby grow and develop as humans, this has all informed my specific perspective on what best practice housing should include.
The 6 elements of best practice housing
It was from this understanding that we developed the Innovation House framework as some guide posts for people looking for better housing. We continued to work with educating and trying to influence better decisions.
This Innovation House framework of 6 key elements is really helpful for a practitioner in the construction space to understand a best practice response. However, we learnt to understand that best practice beautiful construction has relatively little impact until the human behaviours are aligned with the overall aim of great homes that enable thriving humans.
People why not start there?
This for me is my journey to People Purpose Place. This is the way I feel a home should be created, starting with the people, their purpose and then seeing what that place could look like. This focus on the human first has been somewhat a revelation for my development and the excitement in this work that our not for profit is doing. Here at People Purpose Place we understand the benefits to individuals as well as the subsequent benefits to households and the wider community of a change of focus. We have built a systematic framework that can guide almost anyone to progress their individual journey towards a great home.
As Gabor Maté says,
‘It’s good to feel disillusioned about how things are, because it’s better than living with an illusion’
Presentation to CRC for Water Sensitive Cities
Return to About Us
