12 Apr 2011
Leading consulting and engineering firm Norman Disney & Young (NDY) has thrown its support behind the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA’s) new Green Star – Performance rating tool.
NDY is the first sponsor of the tool, which is being developed to assess the operational performance of existing buildings.
According to the GBCA’s Chief Executive, Romilly Madew, the ‘silver’ sponsor status reinforces NDY’s international reputation as a leader in sustainable building practices.
“NDY’s expertise and experience will be essential in helping us to identify best practice operational procedures and benchmarks for existing buildings and develop a holistic rating tool that incorporates all Green Star categories into one rating,” Ms Madew says.
NDY Director and sustainability champion, James Redwood says: “Existing buildings represent the single biggest opportunity to reduce the environmental impact from the built environment. The link between commissioning, tuning, operations and management has been somewhat missing from the discussion. This performance tool is a real opportunity to bring those influences together.”
The GBCA expects the Green Star – Performance assessment methodology will be particularly useful for facilities managers, building owners, portfolio managers and governments, as well as investors, building occupants and consultants.
“We commend NDY for supporting the Green Star - Performance project,” Ms Madew adds. “NDY is determined to ‘walk its talk’, having been awarded Green Star – Interiors v1.1 ratings for its offices in Melbourne and Canberra, and has just recently achieved a 6 Star Green Star – Education Design v1 certified rating for the Australian Institute of Management Stage 3 project in Perth. The current Green Star tools have created a common language for green building design and construction and we envision Green Star – Performance as the tool that will create a common language for green building operations.”
NDY was awarded 88 credit points for every credit targeted on the project – well above the 75 points required for a 6 Star building – plus one innovation point for the project’s acoustic design.
“NDY is proud of its market-leading position in sustainable building, and we are pleased to support the development of this new rating tool, which will help us to assess the performance of our Green Star-designed buildings in operation, as well as providing an opportunity for our clients that do not have Green Star-designed buildings to start their Green Star path” Mr Redwood concludes.
The Green Star - Performance scoping paper can be downloaded from the GBCA website: www.gbca.org.au/performance
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