Climate change is gathering pace, and urgent and meaningful responses to this global crisis cannot wait.
As United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said when he released the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report on the climate emergency this year, our global situation is “a code red for humanity”, the “… alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable”.
The world must take action now. The Department of Transport and Public Works supported the 14th annual Green Building Council of South Africa convention held early in November 2021 as part of its ongoing contribution to mitigating the impact of climate change. A total of 91 DTPW Public Works built sector professionals attended the event in Cape Town.
DTPW Public Works established its own Green Building Steering Committee in 2014 to oversee integrated sustainability initiatives throughout the branch. The head of the GBCSA at the time was co-opted onto that committee, and a GBCSA representative continued to guide the Department through this committee.
DTPW Deputy Director-General for Public Works Gavin Kode spoke to conference delegates about the recent approval by the Provincial Cabinet of the Western Cape Government (WCG) Government Motor Transport (GMT) Electric Vehicle Strategy and the intention of Public Works to collaborate with GMT to roll out a renewable energy charging network for the provincial government’s electric vehicles. This collaboration is only possible because of the experience Public Works has with installing 3 200MWh of solar photovoltaic electricity generation capacity on WCG buildings over the last few years.
The relationship between DTPW and GBCSA has grown and gone from strength to strength with the Department now having two 5-Star Green Star certified office buildings, one of which has a Socio Economic Category (SEC) award, and having undertaken numerous green leasing and new build accredited professional training courses for its officials.
The Green Star Existing Building Performance Accredited Professional (AP) training of DTPW staff is being combined with the Department’s first EBP rating. This collaboration with the GBCSA Academy is an innovative partnership that will see DTPW very own officials acting as qualified APs in achieving what is hoped to be the very first Green Star EBP rating of a public sector building.
Earlier this year 54 officials in the branch were signed up to undertake the EBP training, 22of whom are already qualified.
DTPW officials undergoing this certification training did a presentation at the conference entitled Stepping into the Existing Building Portfolio Backlog – Developing Internal Capacity on the process, learnings and challenges of this training/certification innovation. Tracy Davids from Immovable Asset Management, Karl-Robert Gloeck from Health Infrastructure and Taufeeq Khan from Education Infrastructure shared their experiences and spoke to delegates about their trial submission for the EBP AP training qualification.
The convention was aptly titled 202ONE – One Planet, One Chance. The conference emphasised that this is ONE important idea, that we only have ONE planet, that we have ONE chance to change the world, ONE opportunity to get it right and ONE mission – a united front against climate change. EveryONE has a role to play to achieve ONE goal – a sustainable future for the next generation.