Green Stars shooting ahead

West Australian
Saturday 18/4/2009 Page: 12

New streamlined guidelines for the Green Star environmental rating system are expected to save time and money. Green Star is Australia's only national voluntary comprehensive environmental rating system for buildings. It evaluates projects based on criteria including energy and water efficiency and conservation of materials.

The Green Building Council of Australia, established in 2002 to drive the adoption of green building practices, operates Green Star. So far office developments have been certified under the system and there are now also tools to rate apartment buildings. The GBCA says the new guidelines are expected to cut the time and cost of documenting a submission by about 15 % . GBCA Green Star executive director Robin Mellon said this could save project teams about $20,000 on each submission.

The accredited professionals who implemented Green Star, with a project team member helping, estimated a standard submission used to take them many weeks to document. "At current market rates, they can now expect to save around $12,000 of the accredited professional's time and a further $8000 of the team member's time," Mr Mellon said.

He said a lot of consultation with the building industry had been done to make sure the guidelines met the industry's needs. "While it's important for the rating tools to stay rigorous to use, and that means being easier to document," he said.

Earlier this year, the GBCA awarded WA's first six-star Green Star Office Design v2 rating, which evaluates the environmental potential of the design of commercial offices, to Stockland property group. The rating was awarded for a new office building, to be completed this month, in Victoria Avenue, Perth.

GBCA WA State manager Nadja Kampfhenkel said the building could be considered a world leader. The four-level 7200sqm building included a greywater recycling system for toilet flushing. It also had automated louvres that respond to sunlight and three rooftop wind turbines providing green energy to part of and robust, they must also be easy the building.