College to grant new certificate in Green Building Design

Okanagan College Media Release

Architects, engineers, construction professionals and others interested in creating a sustainable future will soon be able to add a Certificate in Green Building Design and Construction to their credentials, thanks to a new Continuing Studies program being offered at Okanagan College.

The 360-hour certificate program launches this fall and will provide students with the skills and hands-on experience to design and create sustainable buildings. The focus will be on main functions such as solar and thermal control, moisture control, indoor air quality, acoustics, aesthetics, construction waste management and cost effectiveness.

Barry Brooks, an engineer by trade who has taught at both Okanagan College and UVic, will be the lead instructor for the program, pulling together a team of industry experts to provide current content.

“I’m very excited about this,” said Brooks. “This is an emerging movement and there are a whole bunch of industries involved, including new technologies, new ideas and new ways of at looking at things.”

Brooks says the program places Okanagan College at the vanguard of an entirely new field of employment.

“People ask me: what does a green worker do? And it’s hard to say because there aren’t that many yet. What we do know is there are a lot of jobs that don’t exist now, that will arrive in the next few years.”

Recent statistics out of the U.S. indicate that despite an overall downturn in their construction industry, sustainable or green design construction is heavily on the rise.

McGraw-Hill estimates the green building products market will expand six per cent annually to nearly $80-billion in 2013, outpacing the growth of building construction expenditures over that period.

Within Canada, B.C. already is experiencing the largest appetite for green buildings with virtually half the registered Built Green builders in the country living in this province.

Brooks says these new students will be among those who will understand how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts when it comes to green buildings.

“You can build all the technologies in the world, but moving things forward requires people to think differently as well. Right now, if you build something with efficient heating designed to minimize energy consumption, the building may not be as warm as we expect on a cold winter day, so people plug in portable heaters, and now you may be using more energy than before. In the future, designers will see how each component interacts with all the others, always taking into consideration the human element.

“You have to look at the whole system – the people as well as the building – in order to make it more sustainable. Aiding with that objective will be the new Centre of Excellence building in Penticton, where students will be able to experience for themselves what it means to live and work in a “living building.”

“Our plan is that this new certificate program will give students hands-on experience in using that building as part of their curriculum,” said Jo-Anne Yacheson, Manager of Continuing Studies. “They will be able to learn how it was built, and how all the components fit together in the design process.”

The curriculum will take place simultaneously at both the Penticton and Vernon campuses, with the classes interacting with each other online. Experts and guest speakers will be brought in via videoconference and webinars.

“This is going to be an innovative program in so many ways,” said Brooks. “It’s going to be an ideal program for someone who has a background in building and wants to be involved in integrating sustainable building into construction. These will be people who will be creating multi-disciplinary teams. There’s no question this movement is going to evolve.”

To learn more about the program, contact Continuing Studies at 250-762-5445.