IEN had the pleasure once again to lecture at the GreenRE Accredited Professional's course. The lecture by Suwan was on "Indoor Environmental Quality", whereas Gregers presented on "Green Innovation Features", what we like to denote as the 'fun' GreenRE credits, as they allow you to push the envelope and think out of the box with respect to innovative green building design solutions.
It is rewarding to teach, especially when the students really learn something and walk away with a heightened level of understanding. Before giving our lectures, we polled the course participants about whether they thought it was cheap or expensive to build green. Only 27% thought is was cheap. After our 2 x 30 minute lectures, we repeated the same poll. A remarkable shift in opinion was observed, now with 64% thinking it was cheap to build green; see poll below:
Once factoring in all the benefits of green buildings, which includes improved health & wellbeing, improved sleep, increased productivity at work, higher rental and sales price, improved staff retention, the return of investment for green buildings is short and economically attractive from an overall perspective. The conclusion is clear: If you build, build it green!
For upcoming GreenRE Accredited Professional's courses, refer to the GreenRE website: www.greenre.org