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SANS codes serve as benchmark for rating tool

BEST PRACTICE
The Green Star SA Existing Building Performance rating tool (EBP Tool) aims to assess and certify an existing building’s performance while the building is in operation and certifies Best Practice and South African Excellence and World Leadership

BEST PRACTICE The Green Star SA Existing Building Performance rating tool (EBP Tool) aims to assess and certify an existing building’s performance while the building is in operation and certifies Best Practice and South African Excellence and World Leadership

14th February 2014

By: Mia Breytenbach

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: Features

  

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The Green Star South Africa Existing Building Performance (EBP) rating tool aims to assess and certify an existing building’s performance while the building is occupied and is intended to influence a new segment of the South African property market, building owners and facility managers, says architect and Green Star South Africa principal architect Mauritz Kruger.

Royal HaskoningDHV (RHDHV) was the lead consultants in developing the Existing Building Performance rating tool in collaboration with the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) over a period of six months. This rating tool was launched at the yearly Green Building Convention – ‘Rewire’ – hosted by the GBCSA in Cape Town, in October 2013.

The existing building’s certification will be valid for three years and recertification of existing buildings will motivate people to apply best practices, as a building’s performance rating can be improved, says Kruger. “By applying for a recertification and obtaining a higher rating, a property’s value will appreciate,” adds RHDHV principal service line leader Cobus van Deventer.

The industry believes that the release of the tool comes at a time when the South African property market is becoming aware of the financial benefits of owning property portfolios which have a proven reduced environmental impact. Connected to this, is the growing public awareness around sustainability and of the relation between building comfort and worker productivity, which translates into a demand from commercial and retail tenants for high-perfor- mance buildings from an energy and water consumption perspective. Buildings are the source of 40% of global energy use and, as the cost of power generation increases, tenants will increasingly seek and demand more energy efficient buildings.

“Seeing that most of the points on offer are in the energy and water categories, it will motivate owners to focus on these specific categories by improving the building’s performance,” Kruger says. He notes that correct building management comprises almost 20% of the credit points, while energy and water efficiencies comprise in all 39% of possible credit point scoring.

Prior to the EBP tool, the GBCSA developed an Energy and Water Benchmarking Tool for offices, which makes it easy to benchmark these properties for energy performance. Owing to the lack of data available regarding the performance of other types of existing buildings in South Africa with which to create industry benchmarks, the SANS 204 section of the SANS 10400 XA codes is initially being applied as a benchmark for rating the performance of nonoffice buildings.

“The SANS 204 codes contain requirements for new buildings to achieve energy efficiency and these are statutory building regulations dealing with factors such as building envelope design, orientation and shading,” notes Kruger.

Building owners and facility managers of buildings other than office buildings have to comply with the SANS 204 codes to obtain energy consumption credits in the new EBP tool, and if the building has been designed or built according to those codes, building owners and facility managers need to improve on the SANS codes by implementing improved energy efficiency, states Van Deventer.

“Some existing buildings, such as schools, hotels, university auditorium buildings and retail shopping centres may have been built according to older South African National Standards regulations,” Van Deventer says, adding that if building owners and facility managers choose to rate the buildings’ performances to obtain ‘best practice‘, they need to improve the performance of the buildings to at least the new SANS 204 codes, despite their buildings not being required to conform to the new codes at the time of construction.

“The SANS codes will be used as benchmarks and references in the EBP tool until sufficient benchmark data of performance ratings of existing buildings have been compiled,” says Van Deventer. Kruger adds that more benchmarks will become available for existing buildings such as schools, hospitals and hotels, as more existing buildings are being rated.

“Credits of the rating tool fall within the nine Green Star South Africa broad categories and take into account measurable performance indicators such as water and energy use, waste management, lease agreements, management guides and procurement policies that define performance conditions as well as some building attributes that inform performance,” says Kruger.

“A total of 24 credits are available through the tool, in which points can be targeted in the nine different categories,” Kruger says. He notes that the tool will be used in a pilot phase during 2014 and once it has been refined by pilot project feedback, it will be made available for public use and for online submission and certification.

Subsequent to a presentation by RHDHV buildings director SF van der Linde on ‘Facilities management being noncore or indispensable’ at the Higher Education Facility Management Association conference in November last year, RHDHV held a workshop for universities. This workshop mapped the links between the new SANS 204 and SANS 10400 XA codes for energy efficiency and the EBP rating tool.

“Generally, the EBP rating tool rewards all the buildings which embark on the journey. In addition, it also certifies Best Practice and South African Excellence and World Leadership, as with other Green Star South Africa tools. This all implies an improvement on the SANS benchmarks,” says Kruger.

“The EBP rating tool has identified possible eligibility for assessment for 21 different existing building types, which can be rated by the tool,” he adds.

 

Edited by Megan van Wyngaardt
Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

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