Tag: green schools

AECOM fast-tracks Green School South Africa in Paarl for the 2021 school year

Infrastructure consulting firm AECOM enabled Green School South Africa in the Drakenstein Valley near Paarl in the Western Cape to be fast-tracked so it could open on time for the 2021 school year.

AECOM’s long-lead procurement scheduling provided the necessary planning tool to enable the team to monitor and track procurement of the specialised construction packages. Appointed in June 2019, there was considerable pressure to have the school open and operational, reports Herman Berry (PrQS), Executive, Programme, Cost, Consultancy – Africa, AECOM. A Head of School and teaching staff were appointed and children accepted, which meant that the opening date was non-negotiable. However, careful planning, teamwork and sheer hard work meant that Green School South Africa was ready to welcome learners by 15 February 2021.

The school is a passion project for its founders, Herman and Alba Brandt, whose children attended Green School Bali in 2017. Their extraordinary educational experience inspired the establishment of Green School South Africa. The personal significance of the project, a school for their own children and children from their community, was a driving force throughout the project.

The family had a personal touch in every aspect, which meant that managing expectations throughout was critical. The Covid-19 pandemic impacted progress significantly, with construction halted on 27 March 2020 and only resuming on-site on 1 June 2020. “This added a full two-month delay to an already congested programme,” reveals Berry.

When the hard lockdown commenced, no one could foresee how long it would be before construction could resume. As time passed, the team became increasingly concerned about the construction timeline, as well as the probable impact of global supply chain constraints on availability and price escalations of all critical materials.

To address these risks, the professional team redesigned many of the buildings to enable reduced construction times (for instance, all classrooms were planned as rammed earth buildings, but in lockdown this was changed to locally manufactured bricks) and tendered and finalised the procurement of all critical materials such as glass, steel, aluminium and the security system, etc.

“We even managed to manufacture the custom-made roof trusses for all of the classrooms during lockdown Level 4, adopting a modular concept to increase on-site efficiency,” adds Berry. Critical decisions also had to be taken on how the school could be operational while still finishing some buildings after it had opened.

What is Green School South Africa, and how is it ‘green’?

Green School South Africa’s mission is to educate for sustainability, so it has an extremely strong focus on sustainability in every component of the school. This includes design, construction and operation, but also extends to the curriculum and the way in which this is taught.

The school opened with an initial intake of 120 learners from kindergarten to Grade 8, and will add a grade so it caters for kindergarten to Grade 12 by 2025. The gross construction area of 2 973 m² consists of 16 classrooms split between kindergarten and primary school, the Sangkep Hall (Balinese for ‘gathering place’) and the Heart of School area, complete with dining hall, kitchen, servery, library, art and music studios as well as ablution facilities.

Apart from the buildings, extensive landscaping had to be completed, together with a sports field, road network and security fence. From a design and construction perspective, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) was proposed by Terramanzi, the sustainability consultant. The LBC is an incredibly rigorous standard that requires a project to be regenerative and not just have a zero-carbon footprint. The fact that the site is situated outside the urban edge and far from public infrastructure services meant it had to generate its own electricity, purity its own water and treat its own waste water.

Some sustainability highlights of the school are:

• It is regenerative in terms of energy, producing 105% of its own electricity consumption, thus giving back to the grid and not taking from it.
• It is regenerative in terms water, using less water than what the site naturally gets per year from rainfall – hence it gives back more to the river and groundwater aquifers than it takes from it.
• It is a zero waste-to-landfill site, also taking in waste from neighbours and the community so as to have a net positive impact on waste to landfill.
• The construction process had to ensure that no materials on-site included any Red List ingredients, and also that the manufacturing process of all materials did not use any of these items;
• Endemic flora was re-established in the gardens, thereby contributing positively to the biodiversity of not just the site, but the entire area, with so many different types of bees, butterflies and seed-spreading; and
• It incorporated vegetable gardens, fruit forests, medicinal gardens and herbal corridors in the campus landscape. The school day includes growing, caring for and harvesting – all with the aim of re-establishing people’s connection to the land and food.

In addition to the above, all materials were carefully selected to reduce carbon emissions. Feng shui principles were incorporated to harness positive energies within the buildings to harmonise individuals with their surrounding environment. The thermal comfort of learners and educators was very important, with the classroom orientation, heights, roof overhangs and Thermally Activated Building System (TABS) all contributing to create a comfortable indoor environment.

With the different types of material requirements, in addition to personal touches by the client, budgets remained under pressure, so AECOM drove a value engineering process with the architect and interior designer. Basic quantity surveying principles were applied, such as reviewing the efficiency ratios of wall/floor areas, reducing wall heights and oversailing roofs, advising changing materials to meet target savings and reviewing construction areas of the various buildings, etc. “We managed to guide the designers to make practical changes without altering the essence of the design in order to achieve the client’s vision,” highlights Berry.

When Green School South Africa opened its doors on 15 February 2021, the classrooms and Heart of School buildings were complete, the gardens were planted and all infrastructure components were operational. It was almost an impossible project, but showed how collective determination and hard work can change an impossible dream into a beautiful reality, points out Berry. “This project brings diversity to AECOM’s standard public education services. We hope it will be a trailblazer for similar types of private campuses in future.”

Other key projects that AECOM has been involved with was planning, designing and managing the implementation of ablution blocks and new boreholes for 367 schools within the Southern and Midlands regions of KwaZulu-Natal on behalf of the Department of Education. AECOM also has a long-term contract with Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley to provide project and programme management and commercial and procurement support services.

Professional Team

Main contractor: Energy Master Builders

Quantity surveyor and fire engineer: AECOM – Lead QS Herman Berry, QS Mathapelo Nchabeleng, Senior Mechanical Engineer and Fire Engineer Johan Jooste

Architect: GASS Architecture Studios

Lead interior designer: D12

Civil and electrical engineer: FRAME (Paarl)

Solar PV design and supply: FRAME (Paarl)

Sustainability consultant: Terramanzi

Thermal comfort design: Climetric

Landscape Architect: DDS Projects

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SABIS International School – Runda, Nairobi, sets a regional precedent

The new SABIS® International School – Runda in Nairobi achieved a 4-Star Green Star Africa-Kenya PEB v1 Design Rating in April 2020. The school is being presented as a case study at the World Green Building Week (21-25 September), and a tree-planting ceremony is being planned as part of the Green Star design certificate handover process.

SABIS® International School – Runda offers a world class education to students from kindergarten to Grade 12 within a vibrant, multicultural community that is committed to academic excellence. Construction on the state-of-the-art campus, which gives students the space to learn, grow and discover their talents, started in June 2016 and was completed in June 2018.

Facilities include an independent kindergarten area, upper and lower school buildings, cafeteria, gymnasium, pool, football pitch, tennis courts, mini car track, and an auditorium. As the first Green Star certified school in Kenya, the aim was to positively impact the project’s design and construction costs, asset value, operating costs, workplace productivity and user health. 

With a GFA of almost 14,600 sqm, the school is conveniently located near the Northern Bypass in Kiambu County. The project was developed by the SABIS® Network, a global network of schools that dates back to 1886 and currently educates over 70,000 students in 20 countries on 5 continents. Concept design architects on the project were Archika, with Boogertman + Partners as executive architects. The green building AP (accredited professional) team comprised WEB Limited, a Kenyan based sustainable development consultancy and co-founding member of the Kenya Green Building Society, in collaboration with Solid Green Consulting.

Urban & Climatic Context

Elizabeth Wangeci Chege of WEB Limited explains that the site was chosen to meet the growing demand for a new school in an area that has become densely urbanised in the last 10 years. Being very close to the Equator with no extremes in weather, conditions lent themselves to passive design; the soil is conducive to plant growth and biodiversity, and there is an abundance of rain for harvesting.

The SABIS® Network has developed schools in different regions in the Middle East and South America, and the concept design had to be contextualised, acclimatised, and aligned with local expectations. For example, following the attack on the Garissa University College in April 2015, a top priority was security which necessitated a boundary wall and physical barriers between the buildings.

“Safety on site is also paramount,” comments Anthony Opil, project architect at Boogertman + Partners. “The site is on a steep slope so the buildings were staggered and connected with soft, landscaped ramps – working with the terrain to make the buildings easily accessible to one to another and for the mobility impaired. Courtyards were also designed for different age groups with specific play areas for the lower school and high school – which was an approach that was customized to local expectations.”

The school is bound by two roads to the north and south respectively, with the northern road being a busy highway. SABIS® had to provide a budget and infrastructure to access the southern road, which is much lower and further away from the school. The original design was mirrored in order to avoid traffic and highway noise; and cyclist facilities and school bus facilities were provided.

A Tailored Response

Another key consideration was resource efficiency. While there is a greater reliance on mechanical ventilation and heating in other countries, in Kenya, with its high energy costs and a consistent climate, a more appropriate response was developed.

The classroom blocks were oriented north/south with openings, particularly in the study areas, that do not face east or west. Heat gain from outside surfaces was limited by merging soft and hard landscaping and, in the site planning, by ensuring that paved spaces do not bounce heat back into the internal spaces. Air pollution was also mitigated by ensuring that the school bus parking areas, which are planted with young trees, are oriented to prevent exhaust fumes from entering the buildings.

Locally available materials and technologies were specified where possible, such as concrete hollow blocks and roof insulation to improve thermal massing. This was a departure from the typical local construction practice of using natural stone because, says Opil, the hollow blocks were more climatically appropriate, enabled costs to be reduced, and were readily available thus circumventing supply issues relating to stone.

Natural lighting and ventilation were modelled and optimised by increasing the height of the windows specified in the original design. Together with the selection and procurement of low-VOC finishes – such as paints, adhesives and sealants – to ensure that the children are not exposed to toxins, this ensured a significant improvement in the school’s Indoor Environmental Quality. Elizabeth Chege explains that, although the AP team did not conduct embodied energy calculations for materials, this strategy was used to govern the specification of materials; and workshops were held with both the client and contractor to ensure that targets were met.

Solar water heaters were installed to reduce energy consumption, and a modular solar PV system was designed for optional adoption – with the aim of providing panels for classrooms in the next phase of the development, to cut back on consumption and reduce operational costs.

Electricity and water sub-metering was provided for each block with smart meters connected to the BMS to monitor and manage consumption, and to offer a learning resource for the school children and their carers. The school was also the first in Kenya to install 100% LED lights in all spaces, thus gaining an additional Green Star Innovation point.

Targeting Net Zero Water

Boniface Chege, also of WEB Limited, says that the project is performing so well in terms of water consumption that the team will consider targeting a Net Zero Water certification which, if successful, will be the first in the region. “We had to consider how children behave and how they like to play with water,” he says. “We reduced consumption by specifying low-flush toilets and low-flow taps with sensors.

“Potable water consumption for landscape irrigation has been reduced by 100% using a rainwater harvesting system and recycled black water system. This is backed up by a borehole with variable speed drive (VSD) pumps and municipal water as a last resort. For the Green Star rating, we achieved 99,9% of the available water credits just by using context-appropriate systems like efficient fittings and a blackwater treatment plant – thus contributing to the long-term resilience of the school.”

Elizabeth Chege adds, “To treat the sewage emanating from the facility, a membrane bio reactor (MBR) – a process of membrane-based technology – was provided. In this process, the excess sludge does not require separate digestion and the quantity of sludge generated is minimal. This avoids the cumbersome sludge disposal exercise which needs more manual labour and land area. The treated water from the system is disposed of into an overhead tank to flush toilets by gravity. The supplier and installer of the system was also appointed to maintain the system during operations.

“A workshop is being planned with the school’s operational team to ensure a smooth transition from design to operations by sharing information; and consumption data is already being reviewed. The team will also implement an occupancy survey plan to ensure ongoing comfort and usability for users.”

A precedent in Waste Management

Construction waste is currently a topical discussion in Kenya and this project has become a case study for the National Construction Authority, for other contractors to adopt. The reason, says Elizabeth Chege, is that the tender and preliminary documentation was very clear, so the contractor was informed at the outset of the required standards. The contractor therefore appointed a local waste consultant to ensure that the waste was recycled and reused, and 96% of the construction waste was tracked, weighed and diverted from landfill.

In terms of operational waste, spaces were provided on site for separation of waste; and recycling bins were clearly labelled for use by the school children and staff. Paper and cardboard, plastic, metal and cans, glass bottles, and food waste are all separated during operations. The appointed waste collection company was awarded a contract on the basis that they collect the separated waste in trucks that maintain separation, and they have an extensive sorting site that employs women and youth.

A benchmark for East Africa

“The growth and development of school infrastructure has a large impact on our natural environment and communities,” shared Austin Opiyo, SABIS® International School – Runda Facilities Manager.

“The design, construction, and operation of the buildings in which we work are responsible for the consumption of many of our natural resources. We are glad that SABIS® Runda is a leading example of a green school and has gone ahead to be a corporate leader in sustainability initiatives.”

Austin Opiyo, SABIS® International School – Runda Facilities Manager

“Research has shown that certain green building factors positively influence learners’ performance at school,” notes Chilufya Lombe, director at Solid Green.

“SABIS® Runda is the first school in the SABIS® Network to be completed and undergo certification in Africa, with more planned in future. With this project we have shown that schools, where our children spend most of their time away from home, can be green too. We hope that other learning institutions in Africa will also adopt green building certification and become part of the call to climate action.”

Chilufya Lombe, director at Solid Green.

“This certification sets an example for the rest of the region,” says Elizabeth Chege. “We were thrilled to be part of the process of opening up the Green Star Africa PEB tool for countries outside South Africa. The client was dedicated to achieving this aim and the professional team and main contractor were completely open minded about the process, enabling us to efficiently meet the required credits.”

In both its realisation and certification process, SABIS® International School – Runda has successfully set a new benchmark for schools and the green building sector in East Africa.

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