13 June 2013 — Getting a Green Star rating – or any environmental rating for that matter – may soon be a whole lot easier and cheaper with a new cloud-based system currently in beta testing mode and about to hit the industry.
Developed by Craig Stump, a former information technology director with the Green Building Council of Australia, the new program, Certify, promises to slash the confusion that can be generated by the multiple documents that need to be managed to obtain a rating.
According to Mr Stump, the program is a “cloud-based project and document management system, designed to make the green rating certification process simple”.
It can be used by owners, engineers or any consultant engaged in certification and the program can be adapted to any environmental rating tool.
Mr Stump said he had already won interest from a range of larger property companies looking for a way to reduce costs and stay green.
“The first step is to set up the rating tool framework you want to use, add in your team members, and then start uploading to the cloud,” he said.
“Everyone is working on the same page. So you don’t need to email various versions of the document and try to make sure it’s the latest.”
The problem with traditional methods, Mr Stump said, is that data-heavy documents must be emailed back and forth between the various consultants, project managers and developers or owners to obtain a rating.
“A lot of information needs to be collated and managed carefully,” he said. “A large number of people are involved, so tracking who has done what is difficult using traditional methods.
“Mail servers, file servers, hard drive failure, licensing fees, software updates, somewhere to keep the hardware, ensuring everything is backed up… it can be a nightmare. Certify removes all that hassle.
“I felt that with my domain knowledge of the inner workings of Green Star, I could build something that would reduce costs, speed up the process and allow companies to get a better understanding of the data they’re amassing. This is the future of certification management.”
“We’re also going to be offering a white-label feature where companies can rebrand the interface as their own.”
Mr Stump said pricing of the system was still undecided but for now beta testing users could sign up for three months free in exchange for feedback.
For details see the Certify website.
Fully agree Craig. The ESD industry should be focusing on growing the pie rather than how much of the pie we each have. If you are ever in Perth feel free to drop me a line.
Hi Mark, Craig from Certify here. There are actually several similar tools available in this space, but for various reasons, many firms are still using Excel and email as their primary tool. For this reason, combined with my 10 years experience developing Green Star tools for the GBCA, I saw there was room for improvement. Great to have competition though – it pushes us to innovate!
Great to hear but there is already a cloud-based tool available which does this. It has been out of beta for a while now and is being used on several major projects already.
Google ODS Engineering and go to the ODS Track homepage.