GSNZAP News

Green Star Accredited Professional News - January 2010


A Happy New Year to you all. We hope you have had a safe and happy festive season and are looking forward to the challenges and opportunities heading your way in 2010!

At the end of 2009 we were very proud to announce New Zealand's first 6 Green Star - Office Design certified rating. This 'world leadership' rating has been achieved by Samson Corporation for the Geyser building and sets an exciting new benchmark for the way buildings are designed and built in New Zealand.

Click here to read more about Geyser's achievement and look out for an interview with the GSNZAPs that led the design team towards this achievement in the next edition of GSNZAP News.

GSNZAP news will be sent to all Green Star Accredited Professional electronically every two months keeping you informed of new developments with Green Star. Please let us know what information you would like to read about in this soon to be regular publication.

Please send your ideas to greenstarnz@nzgbc.org.nz

 

GSAP Profile - Amanda Bryan (BBSc)

Aurecon

'The title of a GSNZAP allows a common language for the industry to understand what I do and a role I may take within their project.'

Click here to read an interview with one of New Zealand's longest standing GSNZAPs, Amanda Bryan who shares her experiences with you.

 

Green Star Projects vs Traditional Projects - Challenges for Project Managers

A recent study by Xiaoli (Cathy) Feng, a final year student in Construction Management and Quantity Surveying at UNITEC reports on challenges facing Project Managers in delivering Green Star projects compared to traditional projects.

The majority of the challenges relate directly to the increased need for general knowledge on sustainability issues and specialist knowledge relating to the Green Star system. This is compounded by the additional communication demands between various stakeholders and the need to integrate sustainable principles in daily management and monitoring processes. In addition, waste management is more considered in daily project management in Green Star projects.

In order to deal with the challenges with Green Star projects, based on traditional project management knowledge (qualification and/or work experience), up-skilling is required in both hard and soft skill areas.

Whilst hard skills such as technical knowledge relating to Green Star rating tools can be learnt from the GSAP training course and case studies soft skills such as technical and business management skills, interpersonal skills, and team co ordination skills, such as good communication, cooperation, leadership, ability and willingness to learn have traditionally been learnt through work experience.

The soft skills are vital skills for Project Managers if they are to successfully encourage the whole team to learn and embrace new concept and technology in Green Star and sustainability.

The question is, what place is there in education and formal industry training to assist with these skills? What are your thoughts - please send them to greenstarnz@nzgbc.org.nz

Challenges reported include:

  • Supporting the design and construction teams to identify opportunities and risks, as well as to take appropriate action and monitor progress
  • Coordinating project team to obtain Green Star NZ Certification
  • Assisting client to define sustainability goals and project objectives
  • Ensuring an integrated design and delivery process
  • Ensuring that ESD is integrated into the building fabric and design of services
  • Determining the tender requirements related to the ESD aspects of the project
  • Determining the terms of contract related to the ESD aspects including what defines ESD performance
  • Increased communications and cooperation with subcontractors about Green Star knowledge.

For more details of the study (Redefining Core Competencies of Project Managers for Green Star Building Projects in New Zealand ) please contact Xiaoli Feng, cathyxlf@hotmail.com

 

Certified Buildings

To date there are 33 Certified Ratings in NZ spread over six tools with over 30 others registered as shown in the graph below.

In addition to the 6 Green Star - Office Design (v1) certification of the Geyser building in Parnell, other recently certified projects are:

  • The Drake Project, 4 Green Star - Office Design (v1)
  • National Bank Centre, 5 Green Star - Office Design 2009 (First Existing building rating)
  • Ironbank, 5 Green Star - Office Built (v1)

Registered and Certified Projects Graph

 

In Brief

Resources Available Online

Education

We are now taking registrations for the first round of GSNZAP training in 2010 as well as the first 'Introduction to Green Building' event for 2010.

Please forward information about the following dates to your teams:

Latest Technical Clarifications and Credit Interpretation Requests

Look out for the new release of technical Clarifications and Credit Interpret Requests to be released on 1 Feb 2010.

Tools in Development

Streamlining Assessment Project

A number of key strategies to simplify and streamline the assessment process, therefore reducing the associated cost of certification, have been identified. The first of these strategies to be implemented will be the release of an example submission. Coversheet templates will then be developed incorporating the relevant compliance requirements of each credit to be completed by the project team and submitted along with relevant substantiating documentation.

The purpose of these coversheet templates is to reduce the workload of the project team through the streamlining of the specialist reports required within the technical manuals while increasing submission consistency and alignment with the requirements of each technical manual.

We look forward to bringing you this GSNZAP News on a regular basis and to hearing from you about what you want to hear about in your newsletter.

The Green Star Team

GSNZAP Exam

Related Links

GSNZAP Newsletters