Hickinbotham Group and Sustainable Cities and Communities

Introduction

The company showcased in this chapter is Hickinbotham Group, and they specialise in the design, construction, and sale of affordable and sustainable homes in South Australia. The company uses the branding of Hickinbotham Group on its websites and marketing information, and people generally know the company by this name. It is a family-owned company founded in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1954 by Alan Hickinbotham and has been a family-owned business for three generations. The company initially started as a small family-owned company that built homes for friends and family.

The company has a strong commitment to sustainable development and has been actively engaged in initiatives aimed at reducing its environmental footprint. This chapter aims to outline the family business that has championed affordable housing and provide insights into the progressive, sustainable building practices that align with the SDGs.

Vision and Mission

The mission of Hickinbotham Group is to design and build beautiful, functional and affordable homes. Hickinbotham Group is committed to sustainable building practices and minimising their footprint on the planet.

Products Offered by Hickinbotham Group

Hickinbotham Group is an Australian-based residential construction company that provides a wide range of products and services related to home building. Sustainability is a core feature of their products and is part of their branding of high-quality products.

Hickinbotham Group offers a variety of house and land packages, which include the land and the construction of a new home. They have a range of pre-designed homes. Hickinbotham Group also provides custom-designed homes for those who want to create a unique and personalised home. They work closely with their customers to design and build homes that meet their specific requirements and desires. Hickinbotham Group has a range of display homes that showcase their design and building capabilities. Customers can visit these display homes to see the quality of their workmanship and get inspiration for their home designs.

Background of Hickinbotham Group

Alan Hickinbotham founded Hickinbotham Group in 1954. Alan achieved a Bachelor of Science from Adelaide University and taught at Geelong Grammar School before moving into home construction. Alan Hickinbotham's life was notable in the local history of South Australia. He became a renowned sportsman, representing South Adelaide, South Australia and Geelong in football, and then became a successful businessman. Since the founding of the company, it has been taken over by Alan's son, Michael, who now serves as the Managing Director. The company has built thousands of homes across South Australia and has won numerous awards for design, innovation, and sustainability.

Michael Hickinbotham took over the family company in 2002. Before doing so, he completed his education in law specialising in corporate and commercial law. He did not immediately go into the family business but rather gained life experience working as a jackaroo, as a bartender and as a ‘roughneck’ on an oil rig. Upon joining the business, he held various positions in the company to gain an understanding of every aspect of the organisation, including home construction and land development. He took on the role of Managing Director in 2002. Michael Hickinbotham is active in the company's operations as shown in Fig. 1.

Michael has received a Centenary Medal for his services to the Australian building industry and the community and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia for his contribution to South Australia and his commitment to education. He has also been awarded the Housing Industry Association's (HIA) most prestigious honour, the Sir Phillip Lynch Award of Excellence. The award recognises individuals who have provided innovative and valuable contributions to the housing industry and who demonstrate unfailing integrity and an exemplary attitude of excellence.

Michael's sister Ruth Vagnarelli has been an integral part of the family business for over 30 years. A former journalist, Ruth has qualifications in interior design. As Design Director for Hickinbotham's building operations, Ruth leads a team of the best architects and designers to create its housing ranges and is responsible for the company's award-winning display villages.

From the 1960s to the present day, Hickinbotham Group has expanded its operations to become the largest home-building company in South Australia. The company also began to diversify its business by developing land and housing communities. In the 1980s, Hickinbotham Group continued to expand its operations into other parts of Australia and started building homes in Queensland. The company also prioritised environmentally sustainable building practices using innovative materials and construction techniques to reduce its environmental impact.

Hickinbotham Group remains one of Australia's largest home-building companies, with a reputation for quality, affordability, and innovative design. The company has won numerous awards for its work, including the Housing Industry Association's South Australian Professional Major Builder award. The company is responsible for one in every four new homes built in greater Adelaide. In 2022 the company had $2 billion of projects under development and employed more than 4,000 people, including its much-valued subcontractors. Hickinbotham Group is South Australia's largest and longest established building and development company and the 8th largest detached residential builder in Australia.

The Hickinbotham family is also involved in Australia's wine industry, with Michael's father, Alan, and brother, David, establishing vineyards at Clarendon in South Australia. The vineyards have been rated by wine doyen Robert Parker Jr. as one of the world's greatest wine estates. The family's wine business is managed by David A. Hickinbotham, and has been exporting wine for over 45 years and has produced internationally awarded premium wines.

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Fig. 1.

Michael Hickinbotham (Hickinbotham Group, n.d.).

Key Milestones in the Hickinbotham family business:

• 1954: Creation of Hickinbotham Group family business

• 1963: Foxfield Athelstone is released and becomes the first residential subdivision to win a Civic Trust award for protecting the natural environment and the first to use underground powerlines on a private estate (Hickinbotham, n.d.).

• The 1960s: Hickinbotham is the first company to offer architecturally designed villa and courtyard homes for smaller blocks. Offered at the company's Athelstone development in the late 1960s, this was a sustainable initiative to enable more housing on less land and provide options to home buyers who did not want the traditional home on a quarter-acre allotment. Unfortunately, it was too ahead of its time, and the market did not accept this new form of housing.

• The 1970s: Hickinbotham Group expands its operations, establishing a commercial building division, a land division, and a finance division. The company was the first to develop open plan homes and, in the 1970s, developed homes with moveable walls so as families grew and changed, the home could be easily adapted.

• 1970: Hickinbotham commissions award-winning architect Hank den Ouden to design the ‘no gutter’ house and builds it that year.

• The 1980s: The company expands into Queensland.

• The 1990s: Hickinbotham Group introduces a range of new house designs and establishes a design centre to help customers customise their homes. This includes a focus on sustainability.

• 1993: Hickinbotham partners with CSIRO, the South Australian Government and Playford Council (formerly Munno Para Council) to pioneer aquifer storage and recovery at the company's Andrews Farm development. This project received international recognition and set the national standards for aquifer recharge and recovery.

• 1994: Hickinbotham constructs the ground-breaking Renmark Water Reclamation Plant for the Renmark Council. This uses state-of-the-art technology to purify and filter the township's wastewater so it can be re-used. The project wins a number of environmental awards.

• 1995: In an Australian first, Hickinbotham finances and builds the first privately owned public school, Woodend Primary School, at its Woodend estate.

• 1997: The company endows and builds St Columba College at its Andrews Farm estate – Australia's first joint ecumenical Anglican-Catholic school – which soon becomes the second-largest school in the state.

• 2002: Michael Hickinbotham takes over the family business.

• Early 2000s: Hickinbotham partners with award-winning architect Max Pritchard on custom-designed, sustainable homes for the State Government's sustainable Lochiel Park project in Campbelltown. This results in the state's first 7.5-star energy rated homes.

• 2007: In working with Max Pritchard on high-end sustainable homes at Lochiel Park, Hickinbotham wanted to democratise sustainability and offer more affordable and sustainable housing to a larger market. Hickinbotham partners with Max to create the sustainable Affordable Architect series – an Australian first. The range of more than 40 homes was designed around a northern orientation to encourage passive heating and cooling and maximise cross-flow ventilation. The range was designed in such a way to enable the client to build the home they could afford at the time, and as their family grew they could add on rooms. At the time, this was the only range in Australia that was designed to grow with the families who lived in them.

• 2008: Hickinbotham becomes the first volume builder to offer ‘Green Choice’ environmentally sustainable options to clients.

• The 2010s: Work begins on a $1.2 billion master-planned community at Two Wells north of Adelaide, in a unique public private partnership between Adelaide Plains Council and the Hickinbotham Group. The Liberty and Eden residential precincts will house more than 3,000 families and already housing construction is growing in the precinct. Two Wells wins a Planning Institute of Australia Award (SA Chapter) for Planning Excellence.

• 2021: Hickinbotham endows Xavier College Two Wells campus. The school opens its doors with 80 students, growing to more than 550 students in 2023.

• The 2020s: The company celebrates its 70th anniversary and continues to be the largest builder and developer in South Australia.

Throughout its history, Hickinbotham Group have earned a reputation for building quality homes and delivering exceptional customer service. The company has won numerous awards for its designs and developments, and it remains committed to providing affordable, sustainable homes for families across South Australia.

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Fig. 2.

Community Space is an Important Part of Hickinbotham Planned Communities.

SDG#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities and Hickinbotham Group

The vision and mission of Hickinbotham Group relate to SDG#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities through a shift in philosophy when Michael and Alan took over the business. Sustainable design became a more important feature of all buildings from this time.

Recently under Michael Hickinbotham's leadership, the company became the first South Australian builder to offer a range of sustainable housing for the volume building market. It created wastewater recycling for the township of Renmark, which was the first aquifer storage and recovery project in Australia. Projects such as wastewater recycling and aquifer storage are not the domain of the average residential builder but are a standard component of homes built by Hickinbotham Group.

All houses built by Hickinbotham Group include water-efficient showerheads and WELS-rated tapware as standard features. WELS is the Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards scheme that gives a zero- to six-star rating to household plumbing components. The company also offer four-star, dual-flush toilet systems. Hickinbotham Group has always been an innovator in making better use of rainwater, and their homes come with the option of having a rainwater tank plumbed in for use in the toilet. The average South Australian home uses 600 litres of water a day. In a country that regularly experiences drought, the importance of water-saving devices in houses as standard features cannot be underemphasised.

While the company does not explicitly align their sustainability activities, it was chosen to be profiled in this book because of its long-standing commitment to affordable housing and sustainable housing design. The company communicates its environmental ethos and performance through its marketing material. An example of this is Hickinbotham Group’s promotion of its design and construction of community infrastructure as shown in Fig. 2 below.

An overview of how Hickinbotham Group address each of the SDG targets of SDG#11 is provided in the table below (Table 1).

Hickinbotham's Business Model and SDG#11

The company's commitment to sustainability is a key differentiator in the competitive residential construction industry and has helped to build a strong reputation for the company among its customers. As Michael Hickinbotham describes below, at the heart of the business model of the company is that home buyers demand energy and environmental efficiency.

‘Increasingly, home buyers want reassurance that their homes will be energy efficient to support their hip pocket as well as the environment’.

The key features of the business that pertain to sustainability in the business model include:

• Energy-efficient design – Hickinbotham Group uses design principles that prioritise energy efficiency. This includes the placement of windows and doors to maximise natural light and ventilation, the use of insulation and sealing to reduce energy loss and the installation of energy-efficient appliances.

• Solar power – Many Hickinbotham Group homes come equipped with solar panels, which can generate electricity from sunlight and reduce reliance on the grid. They can also offer battery storage solutions to store excess solar energy for use when the sun isn't shining.

• Water conservation – Hickinbotham Group uses water-saving fixtures, such as low-flow showerheads and faucets, and dual-flush toilets. They also offer rainwater harvesting systems to collect and store rainwater for use in landscaping.

• Sustainable materials – Hickinbotham Group uses sustainable building materials wherever possible. This includes recycled or salvaged building materials, locally sourced materials to reduce transportation emissions and materials with low embodied carbon.

• Waste reduction – Hickinbotham Group prioritises waste reduction during the building process. This includes recycling construction waste, reducing unnecessary packaging and reusing materials where possible.

The company's website provides details of its green housing initiatives and developments. The website below typifies the articles on the website (See Fig. 3).

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Fig. 3.

Promotion of Sustainability Initiatives by Hickinbotham Group.

Additionally, the company is conscious of housing affordability, with Australia scoring low on international housing affordability indexes. Australia has been said to have a housing affordability crisis. In a keynote address at the Economic Times Global Business Summit in 2023, Michael Hickinbotham called on countries around the world to make housing more affordable by ceasing policies of urban containment. Post-COVID, the fastest growing areas in Australian cities and in cities around the world are no longer the inner-city areas but the lifestyle communities attached to the urban fringe.

Hickinbotham Group has a focus on providing affordable land and housing developed sustainably. Land availability remains a key factor that continues to push up prices, and the company hopes to see more land become available over time. It is also pushing for skilled migration policy reviews to ensure the supply of workers for the housing construction sector. Although this is one of the policy responses needed for improving housing affordability, other policy options need to be implemented in tandem with this approach (The Conversation, 2023).

Hickinbotham Group Stakeholders and SDG#11

The stakeholders of Hickinbotham Group are similar to other companies in the construction industry. However, the long-standing nature of the business in the local community means that the family business has deep connections to the communities of South Australia. The stakeholder related to the SDGs is outlined below.

Customers who purchase homes from Hickinbotham Group indicate they want affordable quality homes. The marketing of sustainability through Hickinbotham Group business model means that quality and sustainability are inextricably tied. Customer review repeatedly mentions these aspects of the products and the service of Hickinbotham Group.

Employees who work for Hickinbotham Group are part of a supportive team of professionals and have opportunities to take part in professional development and community activities. These include:

• External training based on skill requirements

• Applying for internal promotion and career development

• Gaining experience in other areas within the organisation

• Regular fundraising and charity days outside of working hours.

(Hickinbotham Group, n.d.)

Hickinbotham Group also has an impact on the environment, economy and social well-being of the communities where their developments take place. The company has received many awards associated with its work. The Housing Industry Association has ranked Hickinbotham Group as South Australia's No. 1 builder for 18 years, ranked 8th across Australia. They are also a member of the Housing Institute of Australia (HIA). They have won countless awards for their display homes including the Affordable Architect Series was awarded the HIA Affordable Housing Award.

Reporting and Measurement

SDG#11 targets focus on sustainable cities and communities, and reporting on these targets are difficult for business. Hickinbotham Group while contributing significantly to the SDGs targets of SDG#11 don't report on their sustainability performance against their contribution to the SDGs. The challenges of all businesses in reporting on SDG#11 include:

• Data Collection: The availability and accuracy of data is a challenge for businesses. The actual contribution of a business such as urbanisation, air quality, waste management and transportation may be difficult to measure from a company perspective.

• Integration: Businesses need to consider multiple aspects of sustainability, and the measurement of such aspects needs to be comprehensive.

• Resource Constraints: Even larger businesses such as Hickinbotham Group are resource (finance) constrained.

• Stakeholder Engagement: Reporting on SDG#11 targets requires engagement with multiple stakeholders. This includes governments, local communities and NGOs. It is obvious through the stakeholder engagement activities of Hickinbotham Group that they do significant work in the community. However, there is little reporting of the significant amount of work they undertake.

Hickinbotham Group could improve on reporting on SDG#11 targets, and this will require a holistic approach that considers a range of social, environmental and economic factors. This can be challenging for businesses to navigate, but the benefits of such activities will make a significant contribution towards achieving the targets of SDG#11.

Challenges of Working With SDG#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

Hickinbotham Group faces significant challenges after recent COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and also floods. Add to this, the planning problem of restrictions on the supply of land for development means that the business faces financial pressure. As Michael, the Managing Director of Hickinbotham Group, highlights the problems as systemic:

Our industry continues to face many challenges, from restrictive land release practices, which limit supply and reduce affordability, to the recent shortages of building materials caused by the pandemic.

He also indicates that innovation is the solution to the pressures the company faces. Addressing housing affordability is a key policy issue for Hickinbotham Group. Addressing the supposed high levels of state and federal taxes on housing limits the company's ability to supply more affordable housing. Innovation in design and building seeks to address this significant pressure. The region where Hickinbotham Group develops most of the housing is in and around Adelaide which rates very well on housing affordability indexes (Urban Reform Institute, 2023). Hickinbotham Group prides itself on delivering affordable quality houses and developments.

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Fig. 4.

Hickinbotham Group Planned Community.

Business and Greater Good

The company has developed more than 60 community estates, setting standards Australia-wide for innovative design, quality facilities and sound environmental management techniques. Fig. 4 provides an example of Hickinbotham Group planned community in South Australia. In line with Hickinbotham's commitment to building communities – not just homes – the company has also invested in the education of South Australian children. Michael Hickinbotham has established endowments for Xavier College at Two Wells and St Columba College at Andrews Farm, pioneered the establishment of Woodend School, funded academic scholarships for children from high-needs families and made significant contributions to the University of Adelaide and Hickinbotham Roseworthy Wine Science Laboratory. He also supports many cultural, sporting and community groups and charities (Hickinbotham Group, n.d.).

Michael is currently a member of the board of the Urban Development Institute of Australia (SA). He is a former Chairman of the Australian Population Institute of Australia (SA) and a former board member of Family Business Australia (SA) as well as the Economic Development Board of South Australia which is the principal economic adviser to the Premier of South Australia (University of South Australia, n.d.).

What Next for Hickinbotham Group and SDG#11

Hickinbotham Group attempts to redress housing unaffordability while providing more sustainable housing. The company is set to grow beyond its current level in the housing sector and is likely to become one of the largest housing companies in Australia. The reason for this prediction is that housing affordability will be a challenge for societies of the future. Rising interest rates and inflation are set to be the norm for the foreseeable future, and thus, the core business model of Hickinbotham Group suits the future outlook of social challenges. Sustainability will be integral in housing affordability as the cost of living increases and sustainable housing can deliver savings for people and the planet.