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World Water Day is celebrated globally on the 22nd of March 2024 as a reminder of the commitment to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030. The theme for 2024 is Leveraging Water for Peace. The Campaign is celebrated internationally, supported by the UN and aims to draw attention to the importance of having access to water, and ensure peace and wellbeing. Every nation needs to address water scarcity, because our global water system is complex, and inequity exists. Today about 2.2 billion people still lack access to clean drinking water for example, Mexico City right now is facing a water crisis. ARKANCE is proud to partner with The World Green Building Council in their Circularity Accelerator Program, now in its third year. The Accelerator Program recently published a position paper called Building a Water-Resilient Future, launched before COP 28 last year saying that ''the freshwater crisis is now as urgent as making the transition to zero carbon''. Dr. Dennis Truax, former President of the American Society of Engineers reviewed the publication as part of a recent conversation with ARKANCE. Dr. Truax expressed that the publication is very thought-provoking and does an excellent job of outlining the role of the building and construction sector in tackling the global water crisis. He offered this reflection on the challenges it aims to address, saying that it is missing a fifth challenge, that of national security. ''The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, World Green Building Council, and Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure established an overarching goal of helping develop sustainable and equitable communities. They recognize water as the foundation of human health, economic development, and environmental preservation. However, the global population continues to concentrate in urban environments lacking the water resources needed. The WGBC has defined four challenges to address this global water crisis. I feel a fifth challenge is assuring national security by addressing inequity and scarcity before it leads to social and political unrest threatening communities and nations''. The paper looks at the four scales of water usage in the Built Environment and describes the impact of tackling the water crisis within the built environment. This is a massive challenge for the industry but also presents immense opportunities to address the water crisis on a global scale. Supported by exemplary case studies from around the world, this paper highlights four key areas across the built environment, where solutions can, and are, being actioned to tackle this crisis. On World water Day 2024, the focus echoes the importance of national security even more as a nation's economy as well as the wellbeing of its people depend on access to fresh water. Infrastructure resilience and sustainability are critical in positively shaping the future of water. The technology already exists to fix aging infrastructure and better manage water by designing for circularity. There is no lack of resources, the solution lies in competent leadership, efficient stakeholder engagement processes and acting collaboratively in taking a whole systems approach to solutions, in time. It is possible though collaboration and community support to remove the regulatory barriers to allow water corporations to innovate circular design of water together with industry. Both can leverage their expertise to become pivotal and powerful innovative partners for water circularity. Jodie Bricout, Circular Economy Leader at Aurecon joined the Think.Future podcast earlier this year and shared her point of view on Designing for a Circular Economy with water in mind. ''Water corporations are such an exciting space for potential circular innovation. They are place-based, so they're really fixed in an area, they interact with all of the community and all of the businesses in the area and they actually manage this system of resources in a place-based area. So they can have, I think, more than any other type of business they can really impact the circularity of the area or the zone that they're operating in. They are set up not to do that, they're set up to provide safe drinking water at reasonable prices to communities''. On World Water Day, let's think about water for life and how to leverage place-based partnerships and digitization technology to leverage water for peace on this ship we are on called planet Earth. This planet is our home, so a problem for one nation becomes a problem for all. We must urgently solve this challenge together if we want to secure a future for our environment, our people, and ensure peace for all nations. #WorldWaterDay2024 #WaterCircularity #WaterResilience #LeveragingWaterForPeace Authored by Johanne Gallagher, ARKANCE Strategic Delivery Lead, Sustainability. About ARKANCE For over 20 years the brands under ARKANCE company, have been providing software solutions and professional services to Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing industries helping them to understand the role of digitalization for the built environment. Businesses both large and small utilize ARKANCE's dedicated industry experts to help navigate technologies as they emerge, driving efficiency and improving workflows. With a global focus on reducing emissions and increased focus directed towards industry, ARKANCE are now turning their attention to providing the linkages between using technology to digitize, and at the same time leveraging the valuable data insights it brings to build more sustainably. ARKANCE are passionate about helping their customers understand how the technologies they use today can help them to step towards net zero in the future, to build a better world.

March 5th marks World Energy Efficiency Day, a global initiative dedicated to promoting responsible energy consumption. Founded in 1998 at the International Meeting on Energy Efficiency in Austria, this awareness day aims to reduce unnecessary waste and support production processes utilizing renewable sources whenever possible. Furthermore, it encourages communities around the world to lead by example with sustainable habits while also practicing meaningful recycling of resources. In the Built Environment, resources such as building materials require huge amounts of energy and water to produce so by reducing consumption and increasing efficiency with materials and waste through a circular economy, the pressure due to consumption of resources on the planet is significantly reduced. A Circular Economy Model In the Built Environment, reducing the consumption of materials means placing value on demolition waste so that the materials are kept in their best condition and continue to be used in the Built Environment for as long as they are valuable. This is done by leveraging circularity as a viable financial model. To help address this challenge, the World Green Building Council launched the Circularity Accelerator Program in 2022, intended to speed up the transition to a circular economy. ARKANCE is a partner in this program which is in its third year. Out of this program, the Circular Buildings Coalition (CBC) was formed and presents the Blueprints for Tomorrow: Shaping Europe’s Built Environment with Circular Construction. The CBC received 57 project submissions in response to the call last November in Barcelona for Blueprint Projects and each selected project is also a white paper. One such project comes from Circotrade, a French company that captures a building’s unrealized value by listing, gauging, and trading a building’s components and their embodied carbon to create a reliable inventory for future reuse. This is a new tradable asset class and a model that helps to boost the uptake of secondary construction materials and brings the power of finance to the circular economy. ‘’Our innovative futures trading contract and marketplace mitigates risks and unlocks value with known costs, timelines, and revenues, so we can revolutionize your approach to material reuse where profitability goes hand in hand with resource efficiency’’. Tina Paillet, co-founder of Circotrade. The Irish Green Building Council presents another Blueprint model from CMEx with an online digital platform that labels construction materials to be reused at their highest value. CMEx is facilitating collaborations, conversations, and change in the construction industry. It is replicable and scalable for use across the construction industry. Similar innovation is coming out of ReLondon through a partnership between the Mayor of London and London’s transition to improve waste and resource management and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon circular city.  The London Circular Construction Coalition is a testbed and offers two key solutions integrating planning and procurement policies, and digital infrastructure that will match the demand and supply of secondary materials at early stages. These two solutions can be replicated and deployed in other cities worldwide. For more about the top ten Blueprints for Tomorrow selected by the Circular Building Coalition click here. These projects are turning circular visions into actions and will be presented in Brussels in April 2024. And there is much more…. MIT Technology Review listed 10 Breakthrough Technologies in 2024 and some of those will help to improve energy efficiency in the Built Environment. We are already seeing the speedy evolution in applications such as ChatGBT, smaller transistors called chiplets for faster computing to the adoption of heat pumps surpassing gas furnaces for the first time in buildings worldwide. Sustainability for all is marking 2024 World Efficiency Day by raising awareness about reducing energy in the Built Environment by promoting some actions that people can take all year long. When it comes to sustainable construction, LEED and BREEAM are energy efficiency certifications, designed to verify the sustainability and energy efficiency of buildings constructed in the US and UK respectively. David Clark, Director of Positive Zero is the Grandfather of the Australian Green Star program, a rating tool for energy efficiency that he developed based on the BREEAM model in the UK. He joined the Think.Future podcast recently to tell us about the financial drivers and reasons for needing an energy efficiency rating, so that the asset such as a tenanted building maintains its value. If not, the asset is at risk of becoming stranded and becoming a financial liability. David offered these wise words at the end of our conversation on the energy efficiency of buildings in precincts. ‘’Don't be afraid of the change. I mean, the opportunity is there. It all makes sense. We have all the technologies we already need. When you go, well, I can buy a heat pump tomorrow. I can sign a renewable electricity contract today. Yeah, everything we need is already here and it's only going to get more efficient and cheaper as it gets rolled out at scale. So we just crack on and do it! -David Clark, Director, Positive Zero. #World Efficiency Day #Sustainablity #CircularEconomy Authored by Johanne Gallagher, ARKANCE Strategic Delivery Lead, Sustainability. About ARKANCE For over 20 years the brands under ARKANCE company, have been providing software solutions and professional services to Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing industries helping them to understand the role of digitalization for the built environment. Businesses both large and small utilize ARKANCE's dedicated industry experts to help navigate technologies as they emerge, driving efficiency and improving workflows. With a global focus on reducing emissions and increased focus directed towards industry, ARKANCE are now turning their attention to providing the linkages between using technology to digitize, and at the same time leveraging the valuable data insights it brings to build more sustainably. ARKANCE are passionate about helping their customers understand how the technologies they use today can help them to step towards net zero in the future, to build a better world.

On World Engineering Day, ARKANCE takes a moment to appreciate how this profession began, and where it is being called to innovate next. Engineering is a profession that must be constantly innovative to deal with the challenges we face today on our planet to ensure we are leaving a future that our grandchildren can benefit from. Engineering goes back to pre-historical times, and in ancient Egypt the first known engineer was Imhotep, the Chancellor to Pharoh Djoser. Imhotep built the first pyramid in Egypt. He was also an architect, a physician, an astronomer, and a statesman, a man with a multidisciplinary education who took a holistic approach to building the infrastructure that benefited the people of Egypt, the richest kingdom on earth in the ancient world. According to Ancient Engineering Technologies. The Quest for Pure Water: The History of Water Purification from the Earliest Records to the Twentieth Century published in 2012, humans began the pursuit of pure drinking water in Egypt back in the 15th century BC. The earliest documentation of water treatment was found on the inscriptions in Egyptian tombs and several different water treatments were inscribed on tomb walls.  The Nile was the artery that sustained Egyptian life and played a crucial role then as it still does today in the development of Egyptian civilization, industry, and trade. In modern times, the Naga Hammadi dam was constructed and is of similar dimensions to the pyramids built during Imhotep's reign. At the time this project was running in 2007, French and Egyptian partners, together with Bilfinger Berger of Germany constructed a retaining weir, 340 m long at a cost of USD$ 421M. It was a project deemed vital for the future of Egypt because as in Imhotep’s time, not even a blade of grass grows without water and proper irrigation. When engineers began this project and arrived to begin a survey of Hammadi, the residents of the area gave them an angry reception. It took a lot of engagement and generous government compensation before farmers warmed to their plans because it meant giving up their sugar plantations and some needed to leave their houses to make way for the weir. This case study demonstrates the huge challenges facing engineers to be able to design, build, and solve problems and sustain communities with water for life. It is a great example of how the community needs to work together with engineers for a win-win solution for everyone. Today water scarcity is still a huge problem in Egypt. According to an article by the African Union Development Agency, Egypt’s Vision 2030 to “increase water supply across the country has primarily focused on enhancing sustainable energy generation and management and enabling innovation and scientific research towards enhancing water supply and distribution.” The use of digital technology to address water scarcity in Egypt aims to support environmental, economic, and social returns on the investment needed to protect the environment, increase productivity, and enhance human health.  According to The Borgen Project, in 2022 Egypt retained a daily freshwater capacity of 800,000 cubic meters in line with 2022 records, and the Egyptian government aspires to achieve 6.4 million cubic meters by 2050. Egypt has some of the most cutting-edge digital technologies to address water scarcity which is even more of an acute problem today than it was two years ago. Live Science reports that Mexico City is facing severe water shortages and could be just only months away from running out of drinking water in 2024. Roughly 60% of Mexico City's water comes from an underground aquifer which has been overused, causing the land to sink at a rate of about 51 centimeters per year since 1950. To address the problem of long and harsh droughts partly due to changes in the climate and also due to this year’s El Niño climate pattern, engineers will have to dig more wells around the city in parallel with improving wastewater treatment to ensure all residents get enough water. Forbes Mexico says that it is going to cost a lot of money to fix this problem and it is a crisis affecting the lives of 22 million people who have been suffering from moderate to exceptional droughts since the beginning of 2024. The World Green Building Council's paper Building a Water-Resilient Future is for everyone, everywhere is about collaboration of sectors to design for water circularity to meet sustainable outcomes for the Built Environment. This paper has been developed by WorldGBC in collaboration with a network of 26 Green Building Councils around the world, as well as their partners ARUP, Brightworks Sustainability, CBRE, Foster + Partners, WSP, Kingspan and ARKANCE (formerly VinZero), and a network of over 30 individual experts, many of them are engineers. This position paper is the latest publication from WorldGBC’s global Circularity Accelerator program, which earlier in 2023 released the ‘Circular Built Environment Playbook’. The Playbook outlines how the building and construction sector can implement circular economy and resource efficiency principles throughout the entire lifecycle of a building. Water is life, we are all dependent upon it, and engineering the water infrastructure that serves the planet’s growing population demonstrates just how important engineers are in our lives. Can you even imagine going without water for just one day to wash a cup, flush the toilet, or prepare food? Engineers and the role they play make all this possible. We tend to take them for granted. The only way we are going solve this challenge is by collaborating. Engineers play a highly important role in designing, building, and solving these urgent problems. Like Imhotep, we must take a whole systems perspective and engage across disciplines and all of the community to tackle the challenge before us. Create says that communicating engineering value can transform the profession's future. Engineers need to have their voices heard in making strategic, policy, and operational decisions and they need support because they are often not good at communicating effectively in these environments. Engineers Australia’s Chief Engineer Jane MacMaster FIEAust CPEng EngExec attended the Climate Smart Engineering conference in 2023, and had this to say “One of the things we lament in this profession is the low profile of engineering relative to other professions, and relative to engineering in other countries, such as Pakistan, India, Canada [and] Germany, and that translates into engineering perspectives not adequately being considered in policy and decision-making at all levels of government and in large organizations’’. Another expert Professor James Trevelyan FIEAUST CPEng said “Financial decision makers will follow our lead, provided we can present solutions using language and ideas that they can understand’’. Romilly Madew of Engineers Australia is proud of what engineering has accomplished in 2023 and it is clear that collective efforts are moving the dial on advancing the engineering profession. One of the milestones she reflects on is the digital transformation project marking a significant leap forward and promises to improve how younger members and volunteers engage with and access resources from Engineers Australia. ARUP sees A new future of water in their most recent publication and outlines nine characteristics of a future facing organizations today. When it comes to putting these characteristics into practice, it will likely be up to the engineers and sustainability professionals in each organization to figure out where the gaps are in tackling and supporting each organization through these urgent challenges together with the government and stakeholders in the community. ARUP emphasizes the importance of using digital technology as a lever that can move engineers and our communities quickly toward a cultural change in how we design for outcomes through improved water management. “I believe that all you have to do is the right thing on behalf of everybody else. And that applies now more than ever as we try to avert a climate disaster, make the world more resilient, restore nature and biodiversity, reduce resource consumption, and waste, and make life better for everyone. Engineers will play a pivotal role in making progress with all these wicked problems, but we can’t do it alone. We need to join forces with other professionals, businesses, academia, governments, and the community, and harness the latest research and technologies to help design and deliver the best outcomes for us, nature, and our planet” – Tristram Carfrae RDI, Deputy Chair, ARUP The engineers of the ancient world naturally integrated seasonal weather patterns and circularity with the natural world. Let's draw on them as a well of inspiration as we consider what it will take to sustain civilization into the future. The role of engineering has not changed much since ancient Egypt and managing water for life is now our highest priority. Today, let’s celebrate our engineers and support them as they continue tirelessly to improve human productivity and well-being, to live together in harmony with nature in the Built Environment. Authored by Johanne Gallagher, ARKANCE Strategic Delivery Lead, Sustainability. About ARKANCE For over 20 years the brands under ARKANCE company, have been providing software solutions and professional services to Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing industries helping them to understand the role of digitalization for the built environment. Businesses both large and small utilize ARKANCE's dedicated industry experts to help navigate technologies as they emerge, driving efficiency and improving workflows. With a global focus on reducing emissions and increased focus directed towards industry, ARKANCE are now turning their attention to providing the linkages between using technology to digitize, and at the same time leveraging the valuable data insights it brings to build more sustainably. ARKANCE are passionate about helping their customers understand how the technologies they use today can help them to step towards net zero in the future, to build a better world.

Two entrepreneurs, Markus Ostermeier of ostermeier H2ydrogen Solutions and his project partner, Joel Vogl of INFENER are thinking future and sharing the inspiring idea of being self-sufficient with decentralized Hydrogen solutions for the Built Environment. They both share an aspiration to become a market leader as a hydrogen producer and supplier on a local level and are expanding into new market opportunities in Europe. Click here to listen now

David Clark of Positive Zero is a chartered structural and building services engineer with over 30 years of design experience in Australia and the UK. Since 2001 he has specialised in providing sustainable design solutions and strategy in all building sectors and transport infrastructure. David developed the first Green Star rating tool with the Green Building Council of Australia in 2003 and has chaired their Technical Advisory Group for the past nine years. He is the author of What Colour Is Your Building (www.whatcolourisyourbuilding.com) and has recently written industry guidance on the electrification of buildings and precincts in Australia. David joins the Think.Future podcast to share his thoughts on how to electrify buildings and make them more flexible and responsive as the grid shifts rapidly to renewables. Click here to listen now

Jodie Bricout is the Circular Economy Leader at international design, engineering and advisory company, Aurecon. She is a globally recognised sustainability leader with two decades of experience working with industry, research and policymakers in several countries including Australia, New Zealand, France, and Dubai. She is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer with the University of Adelaide, a Circular Australia Board Member and a member of the CRC Advisory Committee of Industry Innovation and Science Australia and the Victorian government’s Circular Economy Innovation Advisory Committee. Join the conversation with Jodie on Think.Future to understand the principles behind a circular economy, how they relate to the planetary boundaries and why designing for circularity is a powerful lever for sustainable development in the Built Environment. Click here to listen now

Alexis Davison of Major Road Projects Victoria, joins the Think.Future conversation to tell us about the Victorian Government’s innovative ecologiQ program and Recycled First policy which are focussed on optimising the use of recycled and reused materials on Victorian infrastructure projects. Alexis is an industry leader with extensive experience in all stages of infrastructure delivery and has held key roles on major projects in the public and private sectors in Australia and the UK. Alexis played a key role in establishing the ecologiQ program in recent years which takes a systematic approach to the use of recycled content. Alexis is very passionate about progressing and increasing the use of recycled content used in infrastructure and she is proud of the fact that this program is the first of its kind in Australia. Click here to listen now

Jerusha Beresford, Sustainability Lead at the Australian Steel Institute (ASI) manages the development and implementation of the Steel Sustainability Australia (SSA) certification program, a best practice sustainability assessment scheme for steel companies. Over the past 17 years, Jerusha has gained experience across finance, property and research industries, and endeavors to use her skills in project and operations management, strategic delivery, and communication to promote and progress sustainable development within Australia. Jerusha joins the Think.Future podcast to bring us up to date with leading practices and all things related to steel, such as design for disassembly, circularity, and resource management through all stages including at the end of its life. Click here to listen now

Paolo Bevilacqua of Frasers Property is an Executive that has delivered industry leading programs and solutions at both a project and organisational level across real estate and energy sectors in multiple geographies over a 20-year career. Paolo joins the ARKANCE Think.Future podcast to share his insights and experience in leading in a complex Built Environment by focusing primarily on building meaningful relationships so that people work together collaboratively, in a more impactful way with stronger purpose. Click here to listen now

Sam Archer, the Director of Market Transformation at the of New Zealand Green Building Council joins the conversation with Think.Future to talk about the opportunities in bringing mainstream designers and builders up to speed and challenges them to lift their game. Sam is passionately dedicated to improving the sustainable development of the built environment. In his role at NZ GBC, he creates a common language to help increase consumer appetite for more sustainable housing and offers insights to the market drivers, demonstrating the value of a green star rating. Bhumika Mistry is a Senior Technical Coordinator with New Zealand Building Council and an expert in the GBC’s rating tools. In the second half of the podcast, Bhumika explains the evolution of the rating tools and the minimum requirements that mainstream need for sustainable outcomes achievable through certification with GBC’s more advanced tools that address Environmental, Social and Governance reporting (ESG) requirements by focusing on both community, people and place. Click here to listen now

Dear Valued Customer, In June 2023, ARKANCE acquired VinZero, cementing its position as one of the worlds largest providers for the construction and manufacturing sectors. We are committed to helping you continually innovate and improve the way you build, manufacture and design. With this in mind, VinZero has embarked on a journey to combine the expertise and strengths of its affiliates worldwide into one unified global technology and services organization.  Today we are symbolizing this evolution with the creation of one strong, unified identity under the name ARKANCE. We want to share more on how all the different brands and trade names used by our VinZero global network will transition to the ARKANCE brand in the coming months and what that means for you. This transition is an evolution, not just a name change. It will pave the way for enhanced innovations and offerings to bring you greater value. Our vision is to ‘advance the way we work together to build a better world.’ While our name and appearance may evolve, our core values, mission, and dedication to serving you remain steadfast. Our focus remains on delivering world-class solutions that empower you to design, build, and solve for tomorrow’s challenges. What is changing? In the coming months, we will be transitioning the external identity and branding of VinZero and it associated entities, to that of ARKANCE. This transition signifies a renewed emphasis on global collaboration and the opportunity to offer an enhanced technology portfolio. We will deliver purpose built in-house solutions under the ARKANCE Be.Smart portfolio improving the customer experience and revolutionizing project delivery outcomes for the  building, infrastructure, and manufacturing industries. In early 2024, we will launch a new, modern, and sophisticated online experience, the www.arkance.world website. It’s design and user experience represent the power of our global enterprise while catering to the needs of our local markets. Our existing entity websites, including www.vinzero.com will be redirected to the new site. Our existing LinkedIn profile will be merged with ARKANCE and our other social channels will converge to ARKANCE branding as well. What stays the same? You will continue to benefit from excellent service through your trusted partners, engaging with the same contacts, support and resources you do currently. As 2023 draws to a close, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your trust and partnership with us and to extend our warmest wishes for the festive season. We are excited about the future as one, global ARKANCE and we hope you are too. We invite you to follow our journey on LinkedIn @ARKANCE. Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to reach out to your dedicated account manager or our customer support team. Greg Arranz CEO ARKANCE

Adrian McGregor is the Chief Design Officer at McGregor Coxall and an award-winning expert in Biourbanism, a scalable resilience planning model helping cities become resilient to the impacts of a changing climate. Adrian created the world’s first biourbansim lab in 2006 and his book, Biourbanism: Cities as Nature, integrates the five bio systems and five urban systems in the design of a city’s green and blue infrastructure. Adrian joins the conversation to share his proudest moments in his career by showcasing some global examples of the radical shift in design needed for cities of the future. Click here to listen now