The Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) expects to start piloting a new rating tool recognising the socioeconomic achievements of green building projects.
The pilot socioeconomic category (SEC) for Green Star South Africa (SA) rating tools will be unveiled at the GBCSA annual convention in Cape Town on October 17.
It is believed that the process of designing and constructing green buildings could partially assist in dealing with a developing nation’s broader sustainability and societal issues, including poverty, unemployment, lack of education and skills and poor health.
The SEC, whose development was funded by Old Mutual Property, would comprise seven possible credits, namely job creation, economic opportunity, skills development and training, community benefit, empowerment, safety and health and mixed-income housing.
“These credits address some of the burning issues facing developing countries worldwide. They have typically not been dealt with by existing rating tools, but are an important part of the broader concept of sustainability,” said GBCSA nonexecutive chairperson and the project’s initiator Bruce Kerswill.
GBCSA CEO Brian Wilkinson hoped that the new rating tool would encourage a mindset change around the socioeconomic upliftment potential of building projects in much the same way that Green Star SA's existing rating tools inspired transformation towards greener practices in the property industry.
Aurecon, along with an 18-team technical working group and a ten-person peer review committee, developed the benchmark metrics and assessment measures for the new socioeconomic credits.
Registered green buildings were invited to test the pilot phase over a one-year period, after which it would be updated and launched as a Version 1 Category.