Green buildings - the future in Southeast Asia

LEE CHUAN SENG: In our business, sustainability has both internal and external phases. Internally we do a lot of things in terms of recycling, in terms of going paperless. Externally, yes, as a design engineering company we basically do work for our clients. We design green buildings for our clients. We design industrial plans and infrastructure that are environmentally sustainable.

Sustainability as a key business driver

A key part of our business strategy in terms of sustainability is to use it to differentiate our services to our clients. Two of our projects in Singapore; the National Library building and the Republic Polytechnic have won the highest award here, the Green Mark Platinum Award.

Sustainability programmes

We have been involved in a number of R and D kind of projects. One such project that we are involved in is the Zero Energy building here in Singapore. It is designed so that it will be 60 percent more efficient than a normal building of the same type and then the other 30 – 40 percent of the energy that it needs is generated using solar power.

In the daytime those solar panels generate more power than the building needs so it actually feeds the power out to the other buildings in the academy and in the night time when there is no sun then it takes power from the grid. So over one year that building will have net zero energy requirements.

Revenue and market share

Green building design has definitely allowed us to increase our revenue. The reason is the ability to deliver working green building designs has differentiated the services we provide to our clients and as a result we're able to charge a premium for that area of work.

The future

Next five years - what will happen will be that in all countries legislation will become tighter. For instance in Singapore just this very month, the government here has mandated that all new buildings will have to be Green Mark certified which means that they have to achieve a certain level of energy efficiency and they must comply with various other regulations that make sure that they are sustainable in the long run.

Everyone actually now realises yes, things are changing and we need to do something about it. There will always be public opinion kind of pressure, to make sure that we all continue to operate in an environmentally sustainable fashion.

Advice for New Zealand companies

For New Zealand companies going overseas, I think as far as sustainability is concerned they need to be aware that New Zealand really has this absolutely wonderful image overseas. New Zealand will always be - will always do well I think in being a source of sustainable services. This is because our public in New Zealand are very demanding for those kinds of products and services.

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