Sustainable Development
Responsible approach to the environment preservation and the principles of sustainable development increasingly extends into the design and construction of buildings. There are various certification schemes under which the quality of a building is assessed and evaluated based on a set of environmental, social and economic criteria
The world's most widely used systems for assessment and certification of sustainable buildings are the British BREEAM and US LEED, both applied also in the Czech Republic. Specifically for the Czech Republic, SBTool CZ scheme for certification of residential buildings and office buildings has been developed by the Faculty of Civil Engineering and the Czech Society for Sustainable Building. For all mentioned schemes, ENACON offers specific services.
Site Selection
The BREEAM scheme supports development on previously used and/or contaminated sites that would be cleaned to enable the development. To obtain credit for this item, BREEAM requires that existing contamination is confirmed by a contaminated land specialist based on a site investigation, risk assessment and appraisal. In addition, the client or the principal contractor shall confirm that the proposed remediation will be carried out.
Also the LEED scheme assign credits for development on contaminated sites or sites officially defined as brownfield. Where site contamination is identified, completion of the site remediation needs to be demonstrated.
ENACON offers to developer, architects, designers and other parties involved in the sustainable development completion of the site investigation with respect to subsurface contamination and risk assessment in accordance with requirements of the mentioned certification schemes. BREEAM Europe 2009 scheme accepts national methods, thus the exiting methodological guidelines of the Ministry of Environment for site investigation, risk assessment and selection of remediation techniques may be applied in the Czech Republic. LEED scheme relays on ASTM standard for determination of the site contamination, however, also accepts national guidelines.
ENACON team has qualified and well experienced geologists and hydro-geologists, who hold certificates of the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic to design, conduct and evaluate geological, hydro-geological and remedial works and who meet the qualification requirements under BREEAM. In the LEED scheme, specific qualification for assessment of the site contamination and completion of the site clean-up is not explicitly required, however, such qualification is essential for professional and accurate assessment of this area.
In the Czech certification scheme SBToolCZ, site selection with respect to former use or the presence of site contamination is considered only marginally and the results do not enter into the calculation of the final score.
Waste Management
Both mentioned international certification schemes (BREEAM and LEED) include assessment of the waste management in the construction phase (taking also into account demolition the existing onsite structures, where necessary), as well as during its use. Assessment of the construction phase is based on the development and implementation of the co called Site Waste Management Plan (SWMP). The objective of the SWMP is to ensure minimization of the volume of wastes generated during the demolition, construction works, waste reuse and recovery and compliance with all relevant waste management legal requirements.
ENACON offers consulting services for waste management and support to construction contractors, developers, architects and others with respect to creation and implantation of the SWMP.
SBToolCZ
For the national certification scheme SBToolCZ for residential and office buildings, ENACON offers services of qualifies adviser registers in the national list of advisers (Marcela Velebilová, certification number: PBAD-11-010).
