The Department of Transport and Public Works has a training and development initiative to qualify Public Works Branch officials as Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) Existing Building Performance (EBP) Accredited Professionals (APs). In total, 54 Public Works officials from across Immovable Asset Management and the Health, Education and General Infrastructure components were registered for the qualification and a number have already qualified.
The Department now has 22 Green Star APs.
The GBCSA’s Green Star SA rating tools measure the environmental and sustainability aspects of designing, constructing and operating a building across nine fields: management, indoor environment quality, energy, transport, water, materials, land use and ecology, emissions, innovation, and socioeconomic impact. The EBP training programme focuses specifically on the Green Star EBP tool, which rates both the objective measurement and the environmental performance of existing buildings, and it provides insight into all the major aspects of environmental sustainability that should be considered in the operational performance of existing buildings.
Registered APs have the knowledge to guide a project team in the design and certification of Green Star certification projects, and having its own APs will also greatly assist Public Works to deliver more sustainable infrastructure and office accommodation. Eight of these candidates are simultaneously collaborating to seek an EBP certification for the 9 Dorp Street head office building. This novel training-cumcertification process was jointly conceptualised and developed with the GBCSA Training Academy.
The group members have formed a task team and are being trained using 9 Dorp Street as both a case study (through simulated registration and certification of the building). They will also use 9 Dorp Street in their final exam. In this way, the newly qualified APs in this group will be in a prime position to follow on to submit the training outcome for actual certification of our head office building.
The DTPW already has two GBCSA 5 Star Green Star rated new buildings: the 4 398 m2 Khayelitsha Shared Services Centre, which was completed on 17 December 2015, and the 7 520 m2 Green Building at Karl Bremer Hospital in Bellville, which was completed on 1 July 2017. The 5 Star Green Star Certified Rating is a “South African Excellence” standard. The Green Building was also the first project to achieve a Socio-Economic Category (SEC) Pilot rating in Africa as part of its
5-Star Green Star SA rating.