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Green Sustainable Building

A Green or Sustainable building is an outcome of a design philosophy which focuses on increasing the efficiency of resource use — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal.  Though green building is interpreted in many different ways, a common view is that they should be designed and operated to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:

  • Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources
  • Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity
  • Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation

A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally.

Green Star

The Green Building Council of South Africa develops the Green Star SA rating tools, based on the Australian Green Building Council tools, to provide the property industry with an objective measurement for green buildings and to recognise and reward environmental leadership in the property industry. Each Green Star SA rating tool reflects a different market sector (office, retail, multi-unit residential, etc.)
 

What is BREEAM

BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance.

BREEAM provides clients, developers, designers and others with;

Read more: What is BREEAM

   

What is Green Project Management

How small project management adjustments can reap huge benefits for the environment.

Ever since the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was signed during the 1992 Earth Summit, a lot of attention has been given to the importance of sustainable development. Four years after the Rio declaration, the International Organization for Standardization established ISO 1400 to address the operational standards that relate to the environment. The standard was updated in 2004 to meet the environmental challenges companies face in the 21st century. Compliance to the new standard is voluntary, but more companies have since applied for certification and invited their partners and vendors to do the same.

Read more: What is Green Project Management

 

What is LEED

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. Since its inception in 1998, LEED has grown to encompass more than 14,000 projects in the United States and 30 countries covering 1.062 billion square feet (99 km²) of development area. The hallmark of LEED is that it is an open and transparent process where the technical criteria proposed by the LEED committees are publicly reviewed for approval by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC.

Individuals recognized for their knowledge of the LEED rating system are permitted to use the LEED Accredited Professional (AP) acronym after their name, indicating they have passed the accreditation exam given by the Green Building Certification Institute (a third-party organization that handles accreditation for the USGBC).

Source: Wikipedia


   

Download - Must Reads

Review of SANS204 :: by Mike Barker

Review of Sans204

An initiative that came out of the Department of Minerals & Energy’s 2005 Energy Efficiency Strategy that targeted a 15% Final Energy Demand reduction...
It's the Architecture, Stupid! :: by Edward Mazria

It's the Architecture, Stupid!

Who really holds the key to the global thermostat? The answer might surprise you...
Green Building Impact Review :: by Rob Watson

Green Building Impact Review

Green Building Report: Although this is about the US market, it gives some idea of where Green Buildings are going in the future.
 

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