Construction World May 2015

ENVIRONMENT

a first for South Africa GREENOVATE AWARDS:

The Greenovate Awards – an exciting initiative launched by Growthpoint Properties and the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) – is set to inspire and encourage students of the built environment to discover, explore and invent ways to live more sustainably.

across all aspects and disciplines. These aspiring young professionals have the potential to transform the way we live, with gentler impacts on the world around us. The Greenovate Awards will link environ- mental challenges to innovative thinking.” According to the GBCSA’s CEO Brian Wilkinson, besides igniting a new wave of green thinking, the aim of the programme is also to educate as many property, construc- tion and quantity surveying third year and honours level students as possible in green building principles. This includes awareness of South Africa’s own Green Star SA rating system. Wilkinson notes: “We want to encourage students to learn about green building and sustainability early on in their careers. Investing in the youth is investing in our future. These are tomorrow’s leaders who will take the green building movement forward and ensure it continues to inno- vate and inspire. Essentially, we want them to enter the market as advocates for green building with a passion to create better, more sustainable, cities, towns and neigh- bourhoods. We’re excited at the incredible potential of this programme.” The awards programme will be set up and piloted at the University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand and Univer- sity of Pretoria, and the competition will test the interest of both students and faculty. Yet, just like their vision for environmen- tally innovative thinking, the founders see the awards programme becoming much, much bigger. If the pilot is successful, it will be rolled out to all universities in the country with the appropriate built environ- ment faculties. For its inaugural programme, organ- isers are not only looking for smart green thinking, but big thinking too. The chal- lenge is for students to come up with ideas that would result in a research project that promotes a more sustainable built environment. These can be applied to any aspect of a building – design, devel- opment, planning, construction, mate- rials – anything that makes the way we live greener and our environmental footprint lighter. Round one of the competi- tion will take place internally and each university’s panel will select the top two projects submitted by student groups. “Collaboration between

hope to see students placed in an environ- ment that requires the use of an integrated approach to problem solving with a shared vision across all disciplines in the built envi- ronment,” says Van Antwerpen. Workshops with industry professionals will run from March through to September and the top six projects will be selected by mid-November. The top six groups will then have the opportunity to present their projects to a panel of industry experts selected by the GBCSA and Growth- point. A gala dinner and prize-giving will be held on 26 November to announce the overall winners. The winning group will receive the prize of a big stack of greenbacks for their big green idea – R30 000. They’ll also get to present their research to leading built envi- ronment professionals at the annual GBCSA Green Building Convention. But the benefits of participation go far beyond the winning prize. The programme will also provide students with an opportu- nity to work with leading industry thinkers and possibly expose them to exciting employment opportunities. It will give leading companies direct access to real talent. Students will also be exposed to The Green Star SA Accredited Professional Programme (GSSA AP), which will be made available to entrants at a discounted student rate. “This includes a supported online course and a face-to-face workshop. On comple- tion of the GSSA AP Programme, students will then have the choice to go ahead and complete the online exam and become a GSSA AP and though it is not compulsory, it is definitely recommended,” Wilkinson says. Importantly, everyone is a winner when innovation for a greener, healthier, more sustainable environment is nurtured, and this is exactly

It’s a competition where everyone wins. Werner van Antwerpen, head of utilities and sustainability at South Africa’s largest JSE-listed

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REIT, Growthpoint Properties, explains the Greenovate Awards will introduce univer- sity students to the thinking behind green building and encourage them to take it forward, into a better, greener future. He says: “The built environment has a major impact on the environment and sustainability. With the Greenovate Awards, we want to recognise excellence and inno- vation in students’ own understanding of green principles for the built environment,

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what the Greenovate Awards are setting out to do.

Werner van Antwerpen, head of utilities and sustainability at South Africa’s largest JSE- listed REIT, Growthpoint Properties.

different departments will be allowed. We really

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