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  E N Q U I R I E S

Sizo Sebake
CSIR Building & Construction Technology
Tel: +27 12 841-3116

    E M A I L

Sustainable building workshops

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The CSIR and its partners (SKAT, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC); the Construction Education and Training Authority (CETA); CODEVCO Pty Ltd; the Gauteng Department of Housing and the City of Johannesburg) hosted two one-day workshops on sustainable development and building and construction in South Africa during August and September 2004. The SDC and CETA provided funding for the first and second workshops, respectively.

Objectives of the workshops

The workshops were designed to identify key problems and priorities that should be addressed in building and construction in order to ensure that sustainable development is supported. Key objectives to be achieved by buildings and construction in order to address these problems were developed. In order to ensure progress in addressing these objectives, indicators will also be selected and developed in the future. Lastly, the workshops identified key support that would be required to support progress in this area within the fields of education and training, decision-support tools and information.

Outcomes

• Establish a sustainable building process involving local stakeholders. The first steps of this process are established in the form of an action plan.

• Sensitise the local construction market for skills development and job creation in sustainable building practice by lobbying amongst key stakeholders in the building industry and government departments.

• Implement a pilot project, possibly in vocational training in sustainable building trades, and apply these skills in a pilot housing scheme.

Outputs

The following outputs have been generated from these workshops:

• Participant workshop package (this gave the participants an understanding of the workshops).

• A workshop format and content (includes a review of existing initiatives and case studies and was designed to ensure that any questions raised were discussed at the workshops).

• Workshop report (provides a record of the workshop, as well as an action plan).

First workshop

The first workshop concentrated on key priorities that must be addressed in order to develop more sustainable buildings; key support, guidance and training elements were identified. The workshop involved a number of presentations and a facilitated breakaway session; this ensured a participatory process grounded in reality, as well as best practice.

The following key priorities were identified by participants:

• A need for training and education initiatives in the field of sustainable development within the construction industry. The availability of Cosmo City as a case study makes implementation possible, and could serve not only to train and educate people in sustainability, but also to create entrepreneurs within the community, especially in terms of maintenance and repair of housing units. A skills register should be kept and regularly updated in the community, in order for local labour to be used as and when required.

• A need for more sustainable principles to be incorporated into the design in order to create energy-efficient housing.

• The idea of infrastructural nodes that form part of the design should be developed to its full capacity, thus creating new social networks.

Case study: Cosmo City - a place under the sun for everyone

Cosmo City is situated in Johannesburg, adjacent to Randburg's Kya Sands commercial and industrial zone, along Hans Strydom Drive. The development is also en route to the Lanseria Airport. The land on which the development is planned was strategically identified after five years, to accommodate the homeless/landless/informal residents found within the northern areas of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan area.

Community participation has been essential for the success of the development. The community was engaged via workshops, public notice boards, advertisements and personal notification processes. The design proposal accommodated the community's comments.

Cosmo City is a mixed-use development that provides a variety of amenities, including 12 500 houses (low-cost units, high-density accommodation (fully subsidised), credit-linked houses (partially subsidised) and bonded houses); educational facilities (including libraries); clinics; recreational and sports centres; parks, recreation and greening; churches; and commercial and industrial facilities (including shopping centres and markets).

Second workshop

The second workshop's focal point was to identify the needs that must be addressed for construction and buildings to be more sustainable. The outcome and project ideas (one of which supports the subtitle for the workshop "Education in Sustainable Construction") of the first workshop were examined in order to ascertain key training and guidance elements that will be required to support sustainable development. This workshop served as a platform for existing and new ideas and experiences to be shared and developed into a more concrete action plan that includes a proposal to the Cosmo City developer.

The proposal to the Cosmo City developer, who aims to commence with the laying out of infrastructure in October 2004, is:

1. To set apart 100 or more of the 12 500 planned houses for training in various sustainable building technologies, such as installation of a solar water heater or installation of a rainwater tank. This would mean that the contractor would be asked to complete the first 12 400 houses and thereafter focus his attention on the trainees, whom CETA would be training in various sustainable building technologies.

   Should the Cosmo City developer not agree to the suggested proposal, the focus should remain on skills training. An alternative could be upgrading existing housing development, for example:
   
   

2. A different project / site would be selected and a number of RDP houses could be upgraded, using various kits as shown in the diagram below. CETA is in the process of developing additional unit standards in terms of alternative technologies.

Regardless of which of the above proposals is selected, the following diagram is a point of departure as to how the project of education within sustainable development will be implemented:

The way forward

Future workshops will examine the approach proposed by the first two workshops in order to identify key training and guidance elements. The outputs of the third workshop will be used to guide the development of Cosmo City, assist in the identification and prioritisation of training needs for CETA, and provide guidance to SKAT and the CSIR in key roles they could play in support of projects such as Cosmo City and organisations such as CETA.

Related links:

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Meet the team:

Dr Jeremy Gibberd	Sizo Sebake
Alex Büchi Skat Consulting	Daniel Schwitter Skat Consulting	Christoph Heil Construction Education and Training Authority

Enquiries:

Sizo Sebake CSIR Building and Construction Technology Tel: +27 12 841-3166 Fax: +27 12 841-3504 Email: ssebake@csir.co.za

Dr Jeremy Gibberd CSIR Building and Construction Technology Tel: +27 12 841-2839 Fax: +27 12 841-3504 Email: jgibberd@csir.co.za

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