Inside Green Star - 1st Edition, March 2019

Deadlines for mid-year assessments

Are you aiming to achieve Green Star certification for your project? Are you wanting to plan ahead for this financial year? 

We understand that many project teams have timelines set around major events. To support this, we’ve created guidelines (based on typical time frames), which specify the deadlines you’ll need to meet in order to have your project certified in time for key milestones.

Due to a high influx of submissions during these periods, submissions received beyond these deadlines will be processed within the standard timeframes of 6 weeks for Round 1 and 4 weeks for Round 2.

New Green Star Foundation Courses

We have listened to feedback from industry and have revised our Foundation Courses. We now offer both an introductory day and separately bookable advanced day, we aim to meet greater knowledge needs and to be more practical.

Our new course is split into two: Day 1 Introduction Day - provides a deeper understanding of the business case for sustainability. Day 2 is the Advanced day, and provides more practical, skills based knowledge of our Green Star tools.  Hear tips and work through the submission guidelines, and on passing the exam, gain your GSAP qualification.

Free FAQs for projects

Last year we introduced Green Star FAQs – a free platform that will provides in-depth information on some of the most common and crucial questions you’ll have throughout the certification process. They also provide additional technical assistance when working through the Submission Guidelines.  

FAQs apply to Green Star – Communities, Green Star – Design & As Built, Green Star – Interiors, and Green Star – Performance rating tools.

Best of all, they are completely free to use!

Project teams have the option of including FAQs in their submission should the outcome support their project. However, unlike our rulings in the past, FAQ content is not mandatory and you are not obliged to refer to them when preparing your submission.

When applying FAQs on projects, project teams need to refer to the FAQ code in the Submission Template, as well as in submission supporting documents.

GBCA will be updating FAQs overtime, so make sure you look at the FAQs before you submit technical questions.

Five Favourite FAQs

• F-00096 - How do I get the Sustainable Transport Calculators to work?
• F-00072 - Do I need to engage a waste auditor for the Operational Waste Prescriptive Pathway?
• F-00075 - Can I use the NABERS waste tool to demonstrate waste to landfill reduction?
• F-00005 - Standards for Best Practice General Illuminance - reference for Office Spaces
• F-00006 - Is the supporting documentation listed in each credit required for submission?

Accessing Sustainable Transport Calculators

You might have tried to access the Sustainable Transport and Access by Public Transport Calculator and found it doesn’t work like it used to. The reason for this is the Calculators rely on data provided by Google software. Since this software has changed to a pay-per-use service we’ve had to change the way the calculators work. For information on how to access the Sustainable Transport and Access by Public Transport Calculator check out the FAQ: F-00096 - How do I get the Sustainable Transport Calculators to work?

Interested in Innovation Challenges

We’re always looking for ways to make the Certification process easier for project teams. In 2018, the GBCA updated the Innovation Challenge webpage to display all the Compliance requirements, Fact Sheets and Submission Templates for the individual Innovation Challenges, making Innovation Challenges easier to view and download.

As Green Star continues to evolve, the latest Innovation Challenges will be available for the Industry on our website. We have developed new Innovation Challenges, and retired some others. With this update, we’ve also explained which Innovation Challenges are eligible for targeting in each of our rating tools.

Interested in taking the challenge on your Green Star project?

Assessor Q&A

We asked our Green Star Assessors one question: If you could give one tip to project teams, what would it be? Here are the top 5 common responses:

1. Remember that the GBCA are there to help you achieve your Green Star rating! If you have an alternative method of showing compliance submit a technical question online. Just remember to include their responses in your submission!
2. Explain clearly in the Submission Template how the project is meeting the intent of the credit - use the discussion boxes.
3. After the cover page and contents page - only include the relevant pages of reports and specifications.
4. Clearly highlight attachments with content relevant to the credit - if a page doesn't have highlighter on it ask yourself - is this necessary?
5. Make sure you have an internal person peer review all your evidence before submission to avoid missing vital information. Familiarity can be dangerous. Very rarely are people not actually compliant – it is just tough to see the evidence and connect the dots!