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CONSTRUCTION WORLD
MAY
2015
ENVIRONMENT
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
different departments will
be allowed. We really
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.
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
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.
It’s a competition where everyone
wins. Werner van Antwerpen, head
of utilities and sustainability at
South Africa’s largest JSE-listed
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,
C STR CTIO W RLD
MAY
2015