Beyond BREEAM: The Future of Sustainability Reporting
On Wednesday 24th September, Greengage and JRA Architects were delighted to host one of the 30 UK World Green Building Week events at Better Bankside Community Space in Southwark.
World Green Building Week, an initiative of the World Green Building Council and supported by UK Green Building Council acts as an opportunity for green building councils around the world to shine the spotlight on the mission to create sustainable built environments. This year’s theme ‘Get Up, Green Up!’ is a call for all members to raise the bar for 2014.
Greengage took the opportunity to host an event in an effort to encourage a more connected, more interactive and more public conversation around the role buildings play in creating our sustainable future.
The event titled “Beyond BREEAM: The Future of Sustainability Reporting” was opened by Greengage Partner Mitch Cooke who noted his support of the great work that the UKGBC is carrying out. He reiterated that this work is only possible by proactive and innovative clients pushing the sustainability agenda.
The first speaker, Ruth Geeson, Associate Partner at Greengage and BREEAM specialist, discussed the recent changes to BREEAM. Through a review of the new 2014 BREEAM credits, scheme structure and reporting requirements, Ruth assessed how the 2014 scheme could affect different organisations and assessments. She concluded that planning ahead and an integrated design team would help secure BREEAM credits and would also benefit projects beyond the BREEAM assessment.
Greengage Associate Partner, Iain Fraser went beyond BREEAM to focus on Energy. Iain discussed the emerging policy at Regional Level, as well as the reporting requirements with an energy focus at National Level for both design, construction and operations including the topical ESOS, MEPS & Allowable Solutions. He explained how a ‘virtuous cycle’ of improvement would enable projects to achieve resource efficiency while also demonstrating commendable economic and social returns.
Festus Moffat, esteemed architect from JRA presented the 39 Victoria Street project
on which JRA and Greengage collaborated. The British Land major refurbishment saw the building modernised and the energy performance improved. The project achieved a BREEAM Excellent certification under BREEAM 2008 through the incorporation of key sustainability design features as well as through the actions of a proactive client and a team that worked collaboratively on a variety of sustainability solutions.
For more information about Greengage and when we will be hosting our next event, please go to our website www.greengage-env.com or follow us on Twitter @GreengageEnv for live updates from the team.
