Integrated Design Application in Green Building Conference

To welcome the WorldGBC’s World Green Building Week, the VGBC has successfully held the “Integrated Design Application in Green Building” conference on September 20, 2016 in Ho Chi Minh City. The event attracted more than 160 participants, including architects, engineers, developers and building practitioners from VGBC Members and other leading companies of the construction industry in Vietnam.

Though integrated design process (IDP) is used widely all over the globe, this trend has just started in Vietnam in the past few years. The local construction industry still relies on tradional procurements to deliver a bulding project, which often result in schedule and budget overruns. Through this event, the VGBC aimed to spread the knowledge and experience on IDP with the sharing of high-profile experts.

To start the conference, Ms. Melissa Merryweather, Director of Green Consult-Asia, made a quick review of the existing design practice, pointing out the flaws that current methods may encounter. Traditional procurement and Design & Build process are not effective as they do not involve many important teams right from the beginning of the design stage. At this point, IDP could be an ideal replacement and owners might gain the best from their investment. She also gave an detailed example of how IDP works and benefits the project.

Mr. Elmultaz Elrabaa, Principal, Director of Healthcare, Asia, B+H Architects, who has more than 16 year of global exprerience with several large-scale projects, took a deep look into the benefits of IDP to healthcare projects. He started with showing the challenges of the industry, then focused on the principles of IPD and how it could help to solve these problems. Especially, Mr. Elrabaa came up with case studies, in which he presented his own experience in B+H Architects’ healthcare projects around the world. The method that his company followed to manage project teams and deliver the project got the most attention from participants.

Then came the presentations of two Arup Vietnam leaders, Mr. Marc Snell and Mr. Hoang Duy Kien. They really changed the atmosphere of the conference with both interesting illustrations and examples of the need for IPD and the possibilities when IDP is applied to achieve specific goals.

After a tea-break, the conference continued with the experience sharing from Mr. Do Huu Nhat Quang, Co-Founder of GreenViet. He highlighted the requirement of green building projects for an integrated process, taking President Place project as an example. He concluded that an integrated procurement is always helpful and an indispensible trend.

The last speaker was Mr. Andrew Currie, Founder of OUT-2 Design & Workplace-Asia. He provided a talk on a pretty new thing to Vietnam – Integrated Briefing Process. Mr. Currie showed the opportunoties to save cost and improve project efficiency with well-managed inegrated briefing process, with detailed examples of his previous projects.

The VGBC would like to thank the Sponsors: IES, Royal Haskoning, DHV Vietnam, GreenViet and Hongkong Land; the guest speakers from B+H Architects, Arup Vietnam, GreenViet and OUT-2 Design for their generous and enthusiastic support to make this event happen.

Please follow this link if you wish to view other photos of the event. Thank you and look forward to seeing you in the VGBC’s upcoming events.

(Vietnam Green Building Council)