malaysia green building industry needs at least 10,000 graduates that it does not have now....

I was at an international conference recently in Putrajaya on Green Cities. At one of the breakout session I chatted with this guy who is suppose to be an authority on SD and Green Technology in Malaysia.

Since our GEDS is a start-up company doing everything that is green, my obvious question was on funding... how to get them, what's available and so on. This guy ask me why I require such funding.

I told him that it is because of the nature of my company being a startup and we're in the process of trying to get jobs especially those elusive GBI jobs. To my surprise, he told me that I don't need such funding because its something that I can do alone. Dont need an office, dont need anything... just a one man job to design and facilitate the construction and verification of a green building.

I let a big WOW in my heart... either this guy is super human or he is totally ignorant for thinking that its a one man job.

And he is suppose to be an authority in Green Building in Malaysia... pretty scary isnt it?

To those who are still new in SD and Green Building design....for your information, you need a team of ESD consultants to facilitate the design, construction and verification of a green building. These team of ESD consultants will work with all the other services consultants in the project team such as M&E, CnS etc.

The main keyword here is TEAMWORK...

Having worked with a few ESD consultancies, we normally have a pool of people from such diversed background. A typical ESD consultancy will have engineers (mechanical and electrical), architects and technologist.

Reason being is that in a typical green building design, we will have to design elements that involves energy efficiencies, water saving and passive design of a building. To be able to do this properly you will need a team and theres no way you can do it alone.

We will normally start off a project by sitting down as a team and brainstorming to see which green design features that we can put in the project that will have minimum impact on the added construction cost.

Once we have identified what we want to do on that particular project.... the mech engineers will start on the modelling of the building. Computational modelling for green building will normally investigate daylight properties, building cooling load demand, air flow analysis... and so on.

The Archie boys will sit down in a group tinkering with the design often coming up with the best green feature for the building by playing around with space area within the building and at very low cost.

With this in mind, the ESD consultants will keep on working as a team until project reaches completion.

Ideally an ESD consultancy would need to hire someone with an SD qualification. At the moment, diploma or degree courses on SD and Green Technology is still currently being developed in Malaysia. Learning institution such as Open University Malaysia is championing the cause, looking to capitalise on enrolling working students to take up these courses.

In the mean time.... ESD consultancies will need to hire graduates from engineering or architecture background. They will face a steep learning curve in order to fully understand the business of green building design. The challenges is rewarding and fun.

Its good being the ESD guy... at least you will never be ALONE.... :)

PS. ESD stands for Environmental Sustainable Design.