UK Green Building Company - news

back to homepage

An educational roll for the UK Green building Council?

There are a couple of stories in the forthcoming summer edition of Building for a Future magazine that call into question the green building industries' ability to deliver timely and user-friendly information. Perhaps the UK Green Building Council will put this top of their agenda when it is launched?

Teaching people about and building confidence in the systems and workings of green buildings may be a key role for a Green Building Council. But there are concerns that they may just restrict their attention to activities that are profitable or in vogue with the government? Whilst training LEED and BREEAM assessors to guide property developers through the accreditation process is important, there may also be other aspects such as installation of alternative power sources, new types of roofing and water harvesting and encouraging alternative materials use to ensure real low environmental impact of buildings is achieved.

The USGBC is the best current example we’ve got in showing the amount of influence a UKGBC would have. In America there are a range of educational programs including, LEED Workshops and Modules Professional Accreditation. The GBC movement also claims to be able to disseminate and share new knowledge, although it is unclear how it does this. USGBC says it ‘provides top quality educational offerings on green design, construction, and operations for professionals from all sectors of the building industry.’ There are no links with mainstream educational institutions.

Green Dragon Energy for example, is a UK solar panel installation course provider. Frank Jackson says that his organisation would not support any courses run by a UKGBC, but he did say it would depend on the amount of paperwork he was given.

Apart from BREEAM courses, the UKGBC could offer a range of other educational opportunities. However, without links to the main universities and colleges it remains a real specialism, in a niche. If the Green Building Council movement doesn’t offer more mainstream educational input, just how does it disseminate new knowledge to green building industry? It claims to provide this service to its members, but apart from BREEAM and LEED training programs and limited information on its website there is no real evidence for this.

On the USGBC website it says, ‘The USGBC’s Educational Partner program promotes top-quality training offerings serving the continuing education needs of the rapidly evolving green building industry.’

But Liz Reason of the AECB says that "The AECB already espouses the philosophy and the practices which a UKGBC ought to be promoting - high standards, monitored performance, and a learning network for all’. So is the training and knowledge aspects of a UKGBC already covered by other organisations? Disseminating new knowledge is supposed to be one of the key activities of the movement, but all they seem to do, is to promote their accreditation schemes, for which private companies and organisations pay for. Can the movement really claim they deliver education and knowledge in as broad a way as they claim?

There are papers and news stories available on the USGBC website (under ‘resources’). There needs to be, in my view, a more proactive exchange of non-partisan information made available to the public and GBC members. A database of academic papers might be a start.

back to homepage