Construction World October 2019

Chrystal. He will be ably supported by a number of other accredited professionals within the office, as well as through strategic alliances with other specialist professionals. The future of ‘green buildings’ Green star rated buildings have risen in popularity since 2006, with the launch of the Green Building Council of SouthAfrica(‘GBCSA’). In a recent online article, it was stated that South Africa is on target to be one of the world’s green building leaders by 2019, with more projects registered than any other country. Furthermore, the GBCSA has become the recognised council in servicing the African continent, and making it the most widely utilised green building council when it comes to accreditation. According to the World Green Building Trends 2016 report produced by Dodge Data and Analytics, the percentage of firms expecting to have more than 60% of their projects certified green is anticipated to more than double from 18% currently to 37% in 2018, with the greatest contributor to green building acceleration being client demand. Upon its inception as a service in the industry, engineers and building design professionals capitalised on a gap

in the market. Architects would be ideally placed to incorporate this into their service, however were intimidated by the unknown administrative requirements attached to creating reports and substantiating building performance. However, despite the reluctance by many architectural practitioners to pursue this lucrative new avenue stream, Bentel has historically been involved with numerous green building

projects, such as Illovo Edge (4*), Pick ‘n Pay on Nicol (4*) and FNB Acacia House (4*) , and sees the official launch of Bentel Sustainability as being complementary to its design offering. "Bentel Associates International looks forward to our sustainability arm providing a new service to a growing number of property developers’ intent on creating environmentally conscious footprint," says Chrystal. 

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD OCTOBER 2019