A Christmas Message from APHA
We wish you, your families, and colleagues a safe and happy holiday season!
APHA CEO Paul Wall and Chairperson Kate Nason have prepared a short video message celebrating the highlights of 2021 and looking forward to another exciting year ahead for APHA.
Transcript
PAUL: Hi everyone and just a quick message to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
We've had another amazing year launching our education platform, training 114 students and we are now closing in on 500 members which just keeps growing at over 30% each year.
Now I'm pleased to be joined by our new board Chair Kate Nason who has taken the helm after an incredible stint from Chris Nunn who served on the board for 5 years and as chair since 2017. So welcome Kate.
KATE: Thanks Paul and hi everyone.
I’d firstly like to thank the outgoing board directors Chris Nunn, Joel Seagren and Kylie Mills whose combined effort has been monumental in shaping APHA into what it today. And on behalf of APHA and the whole membership I’d also like to welcome our incoming board directors, Bohemia Hookham and Heather McCabe who will be heading up the newly formed Research working group and Cameron Munro who is our new National Chapter Lead.
I’d also like to introduce a small change in organizational policy that we’ve introduced. We will be targeting a 40% male, 40% female gender diversity with 20% discretionary. This reflects the collective value we place on ensuring a diverse range of ideas are reflected in our decision making process.
I’ll now hand back to Paul to run through the achievements of 2021 and I’ll come back to you in a moment to look at the year ahead.
PAUL: Thanks, Kate. 2021 was a tough year for many and fortunately there was a silver lining in there for APHA and moving online seemed to support our new initiatives and continued to drive growth with a marked increase in social media profile. As well as the certified training program, we expanded our masterclass offering and entered the CPD market through a collaboration with Pointsbuild that is opening us up to a whole new audience.
We’re increasing our staffing levels and have a wonderful team with Sam full time, and Rach and Michelle working 3 days per week. The team have implemented the jobs board, PassivBlog, Vimeo channel and working on our own projects directory just to name a few. They are a really fun, hardworking and passionate team who I really have enjoyed working with over the year.
On the recognition front, BASIX has extended the thermal comfort pathway to included multi dwellings, we have been included in the Australian Government's ‘Your Home Guide’ and worked with GBCA on Green Star Homes. We have made a comprehensive submission to the ABCB on changes to the National Construction Code and held a number of high profile meetings with policy makers and industry groups. So back to you Kate for a look into the year ahead.
KATE: Thanks, Paul. I'm actually really excited about 2022. Firstly, we’re going to be running a lot of initiatives and one of them is the re-branding of APHA. So this was a direct outcome of our membership feedback during the year and we’re really looking forward to working through that. As we grow in members and staffing levels I’m actually really looking forward to working with Paul and the executive board to understand and ensure that we have the right systems and organisational governance in place and that we can continue on our path of this really exciting pace of growth.
So the big event to kick off 2022 is the Ice Box Challenge which will be held in Martin Place Sydney this February. We’ve been really grateful to the City of Sydney who have provided a very generous grant to make this event possible. This will be a really iconic event because of the location and because of that funding. We’re expecting to have about 35,000 people walk through this vibrant hub on a daily basis. So if you can make it down we really look forward to seeing your familiar faces in the crowd.
And so really, from all of us here at APHA we hope that you have a wonderful Christmas and a very safe and Happy New Year and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2022.