The South African built industry is increasingly recognizing that green construction is imperative if we are to reduce carbon emissions and leave a world that will be habitable for future generations.  The move to green is therefore rapidly gaining momentum here, in line with the global focus on ensuring a green, sustainable environment, and the international commitment to reducing energy consumption.

"The worldwide focus on sustainability, rising electricity prices and triple bottom line reporting are forcing companies to become increasingly aware of their carbon footprint," states Jaco Cronje, a Director at EES, an ISO 9001:2008 professional engineering and management company, and a leader in project managing the provision of information technolgy (IT) solutions to the built environment.

Essential to the construction of green buildings is integration of IT and multiple system intelligent infrastructure, and in overseeing this integration EES proactively assists its clients to reduce their carbom footprint and wherever possible curtail any practices which negatively impact on the environment.

"A strong information and communication technology (ICT) platform is essential to ensure the delicate balance between being environmentally responsible and growing a company's African and global presence," continues Cronje.

Bradley Hemphill, Managing Director of EES, stresses that integral to being environmentally responsible is energy efficiency.  "Intelligent infrastructure integrates energy efficient lighting and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) temperature control systems.  Through further integration of CCTV security and access control, fire control and digital signage it contributes to the efficiency of the overall building.

"A growth area within the technolgy realm is the Data Centre.  Here the intelligent network within the bulding connects and forms the nerve centre of the network.  Data centres are growing in size and power thus increasignly becoming more power hungry through air conditioning and servers.  EES places particular focus on Data Centre design on the Power Utilisation Efficiency of Data Centres, reducing the ratio of total power comsupmtion to IT consumption."

These efficient resources and systems of course also contribute to the well-being of owner/occupiers and tenants of the building.