EN-14 evaluation of green mark rating on sustainable development and/or existing operation of office buildings

• Main Author: Ang, Ming Jun
• Other Authors: Kang Kok Hin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/68202
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The beginnings of today's push for sustainable development can be credited to the increased environmental awareness since the 1960s. Through the years, development of innovative building materials and design concepts have resulted in greener construction processes. More importantly, sustainable development combines the energy efficient mechanized systems and conservation methods, using guidelines such as ASHRAE for chiller plant efficiency in Singapore’s context. The primary concept of “green building” is to reduce or even eliminate the reliance on fossil fuels over time. Additionally, its secondary function is to create environmentally-friendly living and working spaces, such as residential and commercial buildings in Singapore which are constantly built or undergoing retrofitting works. Successfully designed green building projects may involve well-thought usage of building materials, long-term consideration of function, climate, location and more. Following many other countries, Singapore also work closely with the World Green Building Council (a network of national green building councils in more than ninety countries), adopting its own set of rating tool (BCA Green Mark) to enable it to assess “green buildings” in Singapore. This research focuses on the evaluation of the effectiveness in which BCA Green Mark has been implemented in Singapore through a case study example. In addition, a respondent-centric survey was carried out and the results are analyzed to provide a gauge as to how respondents in the construction industry feel about various aspects of the current benchmarking system. This is particularly of importance as every year, the general consensus amongst construction/building professionals may change in accordance to new changes in the green building benchmarking scheme. Past studies revolve around the comparison of Green Mark to other green building rating benchmark in other parts of the world. (e.g LEED) This may be effective to a certain extent due to differences in climate and other factors. As such, this report focuses solely on the evaluation of BCA Green Mark as a rating tool.