Architects, Engineers and LEED AP's have tremendous influence on the design of high performing green buildings but they neither build nor operate them. Contractors, building trades and operators are essential to successful green buildings. Their active participation and cooperation is needed for successfully implementing many green building practices and technologies, such as commissioning, indoor air quality management, construction waste management, construction activity pollution prevention, and materials selection and tracking.
To support and encourage the knowledge and understanding of green construction practices by those implementing design in the field, USGBC has recently qualified GPRO Green Professional Building Skills Training for a LEED Pilot Credit. In this way the benefits and goals of green building, currently often unknowable by just reading construction documents, will be clearer to the construction team, and more easily, and completely, implemented throughout the construction of the project.
This proposed pilot credit is a comprehensive approach to educating contractors, trades and operators by providing an approved training and certificate program focused on sustainability, green building, LEED and green work practices.
Unlike the majority of green education which focuses on architects and designers, the goal of GPRO is to teach the people who actually build, renovate, and maintain buildings the principles of sustainability and construction techniques that will use resources more efficiently and make buildings healthier for occupants.
To qualify for the Pilot Credit, the Green Building Training Program must be maintained by a not-for-profit organization with significant expertise and the subject matter must contain the basics of sustainability, green building, LEED, green job sites, and the role of the relevant building systems and building professional within the "whole building" framework of sustainability. The proposed pilot credit is not limited to any one training program but is required to meet a high level of quality.
GPRO meets this standard!
Vince Capogna, LEED AP ID+C, GPRO: O&M, CM, is the executive director of the Long Island Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council and principal of Synergy Green Building Group, Inc., New Hyde Park, N.Y. Tags: