September 28, 2015

Portfolio Certification is suitable for buildings that exist in a common ownership portfolio or are managed centrally. It is particularly relevant to owners or operators of multiple commercial buildings, educational campuses, health groups with multiple facilities, hospital campuses and government departments seeking Green Star Performance ratings.

Major Changes and Upgrades between Green Star Performance Pilot and Version 1:

• To ease the administrative load on owners and facilities managers, there has been a reduction in the required documentation for a number of credits in Version 1 in comparison to the Pilot version.
• The guidelines have been updated to provide clarity on scope and responsibilities of the Green Star Performance team along with guidance on the quality of documentation.
• Targeted Credits can be allocated in the system to individuals in the Project Team. Team members are able to separately control and manage the compliance process for their own credits.
• Volume certification can be applied to common credits across multiple buildings rated to Green Star Performance v1. This approach is called Portfolio Certification.

Portfolio Certification

The Green Star – Performance Portfolio Certification program allows a group of operating buildings that share similar features to be certified in bulk.
This shouldn’t be confused with the Green Star Volume Certification program that focuses on the design and construction of assets, typically using Green Star – Design & As Built or Green Star – Interiors as the rating tools of choice.

Procedure for Portfolio Certification

• Applicants can choose which of their buildings they wish to be certified under the scheme. The buildings listed must be tracked throughout the certification process and will be listed on the rating certificate.
• Common Green Star Performance credits that can be applied across all buildings, such as green cleaning policies and procedures, procurement, and environmental management, can be identified ahead of time.
• Non-standardised site-specific credits, such as greenhouse gas, water, transport program, occupant satisfaction, ecological value, building information and others, are assessed on a building-by-building basis.
• Each building is awarded its own Green Star Performance rating with the average of these ratings normalised through the respective credit areas, resulting in an Overall Portfolio Rating Score.

A portfolio rating belongs to the portfolio owner. If a building is sold, this must be disclosed. The building’s rating can be transferred to the new owner and incorporated into their portfolio rating. At this stage, facility managers would need to disclose any relevant alterations in building management policies, procedures and processes that vary with the originally certified arrangements.

Benefits of Portfolio Certification

• Overall certification costs are reduced; common standards and initiatives that can be pre-approved ahead of time deliver efficiencies of scale and decrease turnaround time and cost for any additional buildings.
• Organisational operational policies, procedures and reporting can be streamlined within a best practice framework resulting in efficiencies and other benefits.
• Supports the alignment and effective reporting of building asset outcomes with organisational sustainability strategies and targets.
• Allows the promotion of both portfolio-wide and individual building asset outcomes against the Green Star Performance tool.