The Green Building Assessment Tools for Water Efficiency Criteria in Malaysia: An Analysis

Abstract

It is conventionally accepted that the use of renewable resources has been in uncontrolled stage where the depletion of natural resources is increasing. Inorder to be sustainable, the use of renewable resources must be at the rate that is less or equal to the rate of natural production. Therefore, there has been few efforts done by certain organisations to create awareness of sustainable built environment among the builders and public. Green assessment rating tools have been developed to act as a reference and guideline in order to create a sustainable development thus encourage a sustainable living. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the assessment criteria for green assessment tools. Four rating tools consists of Green Building Index (GBJ), PenarafanHijau JKR (pH JKR), Green Performance Assessment System (GreenPASS) and Green Real Estate (GreenRE) were selected. The finding shows on how assessment criteria of water efficiency can contribute to the sustainability life cycle thus reducing the depletion of natural resources. These rating tools also can contribute to the designers, builders and building owners during design and construction stage to ensure the green building can be achieved.

Readiness of Malaysia’s construction industry in adopting green building rating tools

“…PHJKR is a rating tool developed by the Public Works Department (JKR) in 2012. This tool mainly focuses on two (2) categories namely building sector and road building sector [9]. PHJKR is a tool that is used in government projects to measure the sustainability criteria of a construction development based on the requirements set by government.…”

“…This can be attributed to the fact that these rating tools are still in their early developing stage, where their overall adoption mechanism is still not mature as compared to GBI [11]. While for PHJKR, it was known as a scheme which is used by government agencies or government related projects [9]. Most of the information concerning PHJKR were confidential and were not available to the public.…”

Assessing progressive green university campus maturity: A framework for sustainable development in Malaysian higher education institutions

“…Besides that, the priority areas for The development of STARS involved looking at sustainability evaluations conducted on campuses, sustainability reports from firms, and various rating and ranking systems for sustainability. Then, there are a few completely different green building assessment systems in Malaysia, such as the Green Building Index (GBI), PH, PenarafanHijau JKR (pH JKR), Green Performance Assessment System (GreenPASS), and Green Real Estate (GreenRE) (Zainol et al, 2017). The Green Building Index (GBI) series of rating tools, however, is the approach that is most often used for green buildings.…”