GREDA holds green building certification training

The Ghana Real Estate Development Association (GREDA) has organised a one-day intensive training programme for 30 professionals from the built environment.

The programme, which was held under the GREDA Green Building Certification (GBC) System, aimed at equipping them with the knowledge and skills to assess "green" buildings.

The training was the maiden certification programme for the green building assessors, who are independent contractors of GREDA.
It was held in Accra last Tuesday.

Green building

A green building is a structure that is resource-efficient, has less impact on the environment and costs less to maintain.

The GREDA GBC started about two years ago and is based on a 30-year of real estate experience and 10 years of experience in green living. It is for residential single dwellings, as well as town and duplex homes.

Green building certification systems are a set of rating systems and tools that are used to assess a building from a sustainability and environmental perspective.

Such ratings aim to improve the overall quality of buildings and infrastructures, integrate a life cycle approach in its design and construction, and promote the fulfilment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by the construction industry.

Throwing more light on the initiative, a Council Member of GREDA, Salah Kalmoni, told the Daily Graphic that with the training, buildings would be certified as either two-star, three-star, four-star, five-star, depending on the green features they had inside. 

Assessment

“So, this is a professional assessment course. Assessment course to teach the assessors, and then later on, it will be put in our cloud-based computing software,” he said and that the assessors would be able to tell the owners the features they had qualified for.

“They will give you a mark, and then they can even advise you on what else you need to do,” he said.

Moreover, Mr Salmoni said the assessors, architects, and engineers to undertake the course so that they could design the house at the design stage to be more green.

A total of four training programmes would be held and one more would be held in Accra, another one in Kumasi and a fourth one at a place that was yet to be agreed on.

GREDA, he said, was leading the charge to have more greenhouses among its members and the Ghanaian public.

The benefits, he said, included a greenhouse, a reduction in the cost of living, cost of energy and a better living experience.

Experience

“When a house is green, you have a much better living experience,” he emphasised.

For his part, the Executive Secretary of GREDA, Samuel Amegayibor, said: “We know our environment is becoming polluted. Our existence depends on how we manage effectively our environment and managing our environment calls for us to embrace green in all that we do.”

Everything green, he said, had become essential for the sustenance and living of mankind.

The whole idea, he said, was for people to live green and it included living in spaces that were green-orientated and “so the idea came that we try and find a way to certify our buildings, create the awareness for the public to appreciate, first of all, what greening is all about”.

“We have some greening certification systems on the market already. But they are all foreign and somehow expensive as well. So it is a bit unattractive for people to try and pursue that line.

“So GREDA …said why don't we take this up and design our own local certification system so that we can engage the public to buy into the idea and then patronise our certification in the ownership of green. So that is what all this is about,” he said.