Benchmark Study on Green Buildings - Royal Architectural Institute ...

seminars. The GBCA also hosts regular member-only educational and networking forums
around the country.
Another Australian building rating system is the National Australian Built Environment
Rating System (NABERS). NABERS is a performance-based rating system for existing
buildings, and rates a building on the basis of its measured operational impacts on the
environment. By assessing areas that building owners, managers or occupants have the
ability to control, NABERS is designed to demonstrate what areas specific buildings need
to improve on. This information can result in changes to building practices which can
increase its overall sustainability. Like many other rating systems, NABERS is voluntary,
but third-party assessment by a NABERS accredited assessor allows a building to
become publicly recognized as a leader in environmental sustainability, and enables the
building and building owner/manager to obtain some positive publicity.
A-6 United Kingdom:
There is currently no green building council for the United Kingdom, but the
development of the United Kingdom Green Building Council (UKGBC)
(www.ukgbc.co.uk) is in progress, with a prospectus released in late February 2006. The
UKGBC is expected to be modeled on and closely related to the highly successful
USGBC in terms of its mission and structure.
Although there are similar organizations doing the same kind of work in the UK, the
general belief in British industry is that the establishment of a GBC will be a good way to
coordinate green building efforts, deliver a green message to the wider world, and make
green building resources and information available in a single place. The key objectives
of the UKGBC will be to act as a champion for green buildings and to optimize profit for
business by developing and enhancing the UK’s world class position in sustainable
building design. If it can also successfully consolidate the nation’s green building
initiatives, the UK’s national green building initiative will be more effective and efficient.
In fact, the largest other sustainable building council in the UK – BRE (Building
Research Establishment), creator of BREEAM – actively supports the development of a
UKGBC as it believes it would provide focus and leadership for sustainable construction
in the country. BRE Chief Executive Martin Wyatt believes a Green Building Council
will be beneficial to the green building movement. “If real transformation is to take place
on the scale required, a national coalition is essential to promote and champion the design
and construction of sustainable buildings,” he says. The two organizations will have
slightly different scopes and missions, making them able to support each other.
BRE (www.bre.co.uk) is a building sustainability advocate that provides a complete
range of consultancy, testing and commissioned research services covering all aspects of
the built environment and associated industries. It makes significant contributions to the
development of national and international standards and codes for construction and fire
safety, and manages BREbookshop.com, which is one of the world’s biggest online
construction bookstores. Through BRE Certification, BRE provides training and
certification for UK, European and international standards, as well as CE marking and
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