Sectional title property developer Bryprop reports that it is seeking to further enhance its sustainability credentials, having recently secured a Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) five-star Green Star rating for its development of Block E, Upper Grayston, in Gauteng.

Bryprop is currently developing Block F on an adjacent property, where it is targeting a six-star rating for a building that will be complete by June 2013. Should it succeed, Block F could become the first six-star-rated commercial building in South Africa.

“Sustainability for us is at the core of our construction model. We are constantly seeking new ways to decrease our environmental footprint while still maintaining revenues,” says Bryprop director Ron Henderson.

Features of its buildings and surrounds, such as recycling, waste management, local sourcing, and community mass transport positioning, are also attracting attention from interested tenants. “In terms of market opportunities, a huge part of our current and future revenues depends on major global trends such as urbanisation, climate change and global warming,” says Henderson.

If the construction of a building requires demolition of an existing structure then it is required that everything in the existing structure must be reused or recycled in some way for the new building to receive a Green Star SA rating.

“For example, all windows, doors and the like must be reused in a new building. In addition, the fabric of the building is crushed and must be used as fill on another site or as subgrade for a new road or paving project,” Henderson adds.

Moreover, local sourcing practices must come into play in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the new building. It is important to source materials from as close to the building site as possible – preferably less than 40 km.

Furthermore, with regard to light in a GBCSA-rated building – energy, light power density and lighting zoning – it is important to have as much natural light as possible. This is to reduce the amount of power consumed for artificial lighting.
Therefore, light shelves are made use of to allow the reflection of natural light as far and deep into the new building as possible. In addition to this, the building must have a motion detection system which will switch lights off when no one is occupying a particular space.

“We do not install light switches in the building at all and motion detection is used exclusively to switch banks of lights off and on. Combined with this, the level of artificial light available in the building must not be too high, and nowadays we are not providing building occupants with the lux levels which we were using a few years ago,” says Henderson.

One of the major contributors to electricity cost today is how much energy during ‘maxi- mum demand’ periods a building on the electricity grid uses. There are well-known times of day or night that are prone to collec- tive maximum demand for electricity. The tariff increases as the maximum demand increases, so it is beneficial to limit the amount of energy used in a building during these times of maxi- mum demand, allowing it to take advantage of lower tariffs.

Upper Grayston has an automated maxi- mum demand-limiting functionality. Given that it is the air conditioning (AC) system which uses the most power, this function-ality is tied into the AC equipment, and if electrical demand starts to exceed certain set limits then the AC system is shut down progressively in various stages without dramat- ically affecting the comfort of the occupants. As the maximum demand decreases below the set limits, the AC progressively ramps up again.

“South Africans are interested in being green, and Bryprop looked at which behaviours that have a positive impact on environmental sustainability people are adopting globally. One interesting point was that of cycling to work. To that end, our buildings have desig- nated bicycle parking spaces, and a shower with which to freshen up before beginning work. “There are also cycle routes demarcated in the business park. We hope this trend grows exponentially in South Africa,” says Henderson.

All Bryprop buildings also have a forward-thinking approach to measure and monitor consumer progress towards environmentally sustainable consumption. At the reception of each building is a monitor whose key objective is a unique round-the-clock consumer-tracking survey. The aim of the screen is to provide regular quantitative measures of corporate behaviour and to promote sustainable consumption.

Block F, which is currently under construc-tion, will also generate its own electrical power from photovoltaic cells housed on the roof. At least 5% of the power consumed by the building yearly will be generated by the building itself.

“By tracking, reporting and promoting environmentally sustainable consumption and citizen behaviour, we believe it will inspire action and translate into changing the world we live in. “Our plans for the future involve ensur- ing that our development focus is not only on GBCSA-rated buildings but to ensure that they are also commercially viable,” concludes Henderson.