All of Us, Together
We know our success depends on the strength of our partnerships. Whether we’re working with our employees, our shareholders, our joint venture partners, or community stakeholders, partnerships enhance our performance, spark innovation, sustain our communities and deliver lasting value. And it’s by lending our expertise and forging new partnerships that we can tackle significant social and environmental challenges that face us all. By developing and building our partnerships, we can create positive, sustainable solutions for everyone.
We leverage our partnerships with local communities, government and business to create sustainable, long-term job opportunities and important social infrastructure. We reward our suppliers for outstanding performance and engage our shareholders and investors to ensure they get sustainable, top-quartile returns.
We also partner with our competitors, sharing best practice in sustainability to lift standards across the industry. And we’re partnering with some of the world’s 
leading thinkers on the built environment, climate change and sustainability. We’ve worked with a huge range of organisations, from the United Nations to the World Green Building Council and Green Building Councils in the UK, USA and Australia.
Advocacy and partnership are central to our approach to sustainability. It’s important that the entire real estate and construction sector is involved and working towards the same benchmarks if we’re going to make a meaningful difference.
We’re working closely with partners and stakeholders to develop international measurement and reporting standards across areas like energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water use and waste. We’re advocating a carbon price for the building sector, which will put a cost on carbon in buildings and provide accurate measurement as well as reporting and benchmarking tools. And we’re stepping up our efforts to ensure all our suppliers – of products, materials and labour – meet our high standards in environmental performance, health and safety, employment practices and ethics.
Our partnership with the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has given us the opportunity to play a central role in the development of green rating tools. With a number of firsts in commercial green building, we are working with the GBCA and industry partners to expand the thinking on green buildings to the development of green precincts and we are proud to be a partner in the creation of the Green Star Communities tool.
The growth of sustainable cities is on every government’s agenda and we understand the important role partnerships play in aligning the agenda of government, business and community interests. Our partnership with The Global Foundation helps us frame up solutions to the pressing social policy issues in Australia and contextualise Australia’s policy place in the Asian region and in the world. 
Close to home and very much part of our legacy, we have recently developed our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). Its vision
is to increase the participation of the First Australians in our sector and that will only happen through working in genuine partnership with Indigenous communities
and organisations. Amongst them, we have partnered with Yalari, an Aboriginal organisation providing scholarships to
Indigenous children from remote communities to some of Australia’s best schools.
Another partner, Career Trackers, matches Indigenous university students with organisations for vocational internships and we welcome the first of our Career Trackers interns this year.
Recognising that Indigenous owned and managed organisations are the best employers of Indigenous Australians, we are proudly a member of the Australian Indigenous Minority Suppliers Council (AIMSC) and regularly work with AIMSC certified suppliers.
We’re members of the Green Building Council in Singapore, Malaysia, China and Shanghai. And we’re also members of the Asia Pacific Real Estate Association Sustainability Committee, who we’re helping to advocate sustainable best practice across Asia.
We’re also doing our bit to reduce packaging waste from consumer products, as signatories to the Singapore National Environment Agency (NEA) Packaging Agreement. We use our membership of the International Council of Shopping Centres to promote a number of sustainability initiatives. And we’re part of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) Property Working Group, which promotes responsible property investment that achieves the best possible environmental, social and financial results.
We regularly share our knowledge on industry forums, such as the Singapore Building and Construction Authority’s (BCA) International Panel of Experts, and in 2010 we joined government representatives and experts from around the world to discuss ways to improve the sustainability of Singapore’s built environment. And we also brought our specific expertise on construction productivity and prefabrication technology to another international BCA panel.
We promote sustainability through a number of important partnerships across the Americas.
In Canada and throughout the US, we’re members of the Green Building Council – a non-profit trade organisation that promotes the sustainable design, construction and operation of buildings.
In the USA, we have a strong relationship with the Urban Land Council, a non-profit education and research institute which focuses on using land to enhance the total environment. We support the ACE Mentor Program, and we’re an ABC Certified Green Contractor in Washington D.C.
In Argentina, we’re members of the Argentinean Institute of Standardization committee, which is developing the country’s first sustainable standards, including an energy standard that will become law. We’re also founding members of the Argentina Green Building Council and are on the sustainable committee of the Argentinean Construction Chamber.
Better Buildings Challenge
As part of our commitment to creating sustainable places, Lend Lease is participating in President Obama’s Better Buildings Challenge, an energy-efficiency program developed to create jobs, save money, reduce the US’s dependence on foreign oil and make our air cleaner. As part of the challenge, we are partnering with the US Department of Energy for technology and resources to achieve our goal of reducing energy consumption by 20% within the next two-to-five years for our Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) portfolio consisting of approximately 40,000 homes, 800 historic structures, 19 offices, and 19 community centers, encompassing more than 65.3 million square feet of real estate.
We support sustainability across Europe and the Middle East. We’re members of a wide range of organisations that promote sustainability including the Green Building Council in the UK, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. We’re members of the Considerate Constructor’s Scheme and partners in the European Union sustainable energy campaign. As members of the WWF-led Global Forest & Trade Network, we’re partnering with more than 300 companies, communities, NGOs and entrepreneurs around the world to eliminate illegal logging. We adhere to the London Benchmarking Group’s standards on corporate citizenship and are members of Achilles BuildingConfidence, a supplier pre-qualification and accreditation service for the UK construction industry. We also advocate for better standards in sustainability as members of Business in the Community and the British Property Federation.
Bluewater Learning Shop, UK
Lend Lease partnered with North West Kent College and JobCentre to create the Learning Shop at Bluewater retail centre, a 5,000 square foot employability and a training centre for Bluewater staff and the wider community.
The Learning Shop is a true example of a sustainable partnership, meeting the needs of all its stakeholders. Bluewater provides a rent-free space and funding for specific initiatives, while the college funds the majority of the training from the public purse. Job Centre Plus delivers a tailored Bluewater recruitment service as well as additional job training and support.
The Learning Shop created over 20,000 jobs, delivered more than 8,000 learning opportunities and drew more than 150,000 visitors during its first ten years of operation. The Learning Shop has been such a success that in 2009, the Sector Skills Council chose it to launch the UK’s first National Skills Academy for Retail. It’s also our flagship community investment, and has been successfully replicated at a number of our development sites across the UK. These include Touchwood at Solihull, Chapelfield in Norwich and at Greenwich Peninsula as the Work & Learn Centre.