TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Professional Green Building Council

Theme B: Creating a livable, healthy and environmentally viable citiesmajor consumer of the potable water that is managed through man-madeinfrastructure such as dams. As a result, there is significant pressure to reducewater consumption in the built environment to decrease the stress on the potablewater infrastructure.For commercial buildings, there is little knowledge as to what constitutes good orbad performance with respect to water consumption. This lack of knowledge is abarrier that inhibits the ability of the market to respond to poor performance withappropriate actions.In this paper, the findings of three studies by the authors are collated to provide anoverview of water consumption patterns and end-use in Australian buildings. Theresults are then extrapolated to the international environment.2. BENCHMARKING ANALYSIS2.1. Data CollectionData was gathered via survey. A standard survey form was sent to a range ofgovernment and private sector property organisations. The survey form coveredkey demographic information about the building (size, location) waterconsumption and also any water conservation measures that have been undertaken.A total of 132 responses of adequate quality were received. This can be comparedwith the national population of larger office buildings which is of the order of 2000.2.2. Sample DemographicsThe sample buildings were spread across the entirety of temperate Australia. Nodata was received from tropical regions; a separate tropical region comparison isreported in Section 2.6 of this paper. The spread of data across the states is shownin Table 1 below. Within each state, the samples were heavily biased to the statecapital, reflecting the nature of the office population in Australia.Table 1:Distribution of sample buildings between states167