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TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THE NATIONAL GREEN PYRAMID RATING SYSTEM

Conference Paper · March 2018

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 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

GREEN HERITAGE CONFERENCE 6-8 March

2018, The British University in Egypt
CHANCE – CHANGE – CHALLENGE

Elain Publishing Company, ISBN 978-977-490-500-1, Pages L- LXII

The Green Pyramid Worship House

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THE NATIONAL GREEN PYRAMID

RATING SYSTEM

Walaa S.E. Ismaeel1*, Ahmed Y. Rashed 2, Eman Toulibah 3

1
Lecturer at the British University in Egypt (BUE), Faculty of Engineering,
Architectural Engineering Department, Egypt
2
Professor at the BUE, Faculty of Engineering, Architectural Engineering
Department, Egypt
3
Researcher assistant at the BUE, Faculty of Engineering, Architectural
Engineering Department, Egypt

*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract
Applying sustainable design and construction practices have always been faced by a lack
of defined indicators and framework. This shows significant gaps in the existing body of
literature. The Green Pyramid rating system (GPRS) represents a preliminary attempt to
develop a national Green building rating system (GBRS) in Egypt. It has been developed
by the Housing & Building National Research Center (HBRC) in 2010, yet, its
application has faced many challenges owing to lack of incentives and awareness. This
study investigates the state of the art of applying the GPRS in Egypt. Moreover, it records
a pilot attempt to integrate the effort of both governmental and non-governmental
research institutions to disseminate green design and construction practices through a
public competition. This presents a pilot attempt to provide direct feedback results
according to practitioners’ feedback who belong to a variety of backgrounds; industry,
research and academia. The study uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to
analyse the data gathered throughout the competition. The qualitative data indicates the
nature of sustainable categories, as well as the types of credits, adopted and the
compliance paths most commonly used. The quantitative approach indicates the number
of obtained points compared to the total number of available points for each category.
This indicates the ease of use and suitability of the rating system to reach its
sustainability targets. There are both tangible and non-tangible outcome results of such an
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

initiative; spreading of the sustainable knowledge and creating direct open channels
between practitioners, researchers and decision makers. Moreover, a public data bank is
available for all certified projects, including all attempted credits and compliance paths as
well as process documentation. This provides the opportunity for gathering
comprehensive background data concerning the pros and cons of using the GPRS to
guide a sustainable building process.

Keywords

Green building rating systems; LEED; TARSHEED; The Green Pyramid rating system;
The Green Worship House Competition

1. Introduction
The building construction industry aims at satisfying human comfort and
wellbeing, yet on the other hand, it causes multiple adverse effects on the
environment (Zuo and Zhao, 2014). This called for the push for Green buildings
to guarantee efficient use of resources and minimizing emissions (Azhar et al.,
2011).

Green Building Rating Systems (GBRSs) aim at balancing the environmental,

economic and social goals along the building process (Mateus and Bragança,
2011; Brandi McManus, 2010). They provide a set of sustainable guidelines and
measurement metrics to cover quantitative and qualitative sustainable arguments
(Kang et al., 2016). The former accounts for: energy, water, materials, resources,
waste and emissions. The latter accounts for: sustainability of the site selection
and indoor environmental quality in addition to other intangible sustainable
criteria. Eventually, they present verified certifications to indicate the sustainable
performance of buildings. There are many examples of GBRSs around the world
examples are; 1) Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED)
developed in the USA in 1993 and 2) Building Research Establishment
Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) developed in the UK in
1990 (Jamilus et al., 2013). Yet, it is noted that it has received lots of criticism
related to its adaptability and applicability to other building types and contexts
(Ismaeel, 2016).

The HBRC in cooperation with Farouk ElBaz Centre for Sustainability and Future
Studies (FECSFS) at The British University in Egypt (BUE) introduced the Green
Worship House Competition (GWHC); The aim of this competition is to design a
worship house that complies with all the sustainable criteria in the GPRS, this
comes as an initiative to expand the application of the GPRS on a symbolic
building types in different sites in Egypt. Hence, a comprehensive knowledge and
information are developed concerning the pros and cons of using the GPRS to
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

guide a sustainable building process in the Egyptian context, accompanied with

recommendations for development and upgrading.

2. Literature review
This section reviews previous national attempts of developing GBRSs and relate
this to the GPRS and other locally applied rating systems.

2.1.International attempts at developing GBRSs

Building assessment rating tools have emerged in recent years to evaluate the
performance of buildings across several sustainable criteria. There have been
some international attempts to develop GBRSs in many countries as effective
means of encouraging sustainable building development, and key tools to evaluate
and compare the green building performance. This has taken the form of tailoring
foreign GBRSs to local contexts, or by developing new ones according to novel
approaches. The former can cite examples such as Malaysia (Hamid et al., 2014;
Abdul Samad & Azizan, 2010), Jordon (H. H. Ali & Al Nsairat, 2009) and Italy
(Ismaeel, 2016). The latter can cite examples such as CASBEE in Japan
(Murakami et al., 2004), HQE in France (Vazquez et al., 2014) and DGNB in
Germany (Dgnb, 2011).

2.2.The Green Pyramid rating system (GPRS)

In 2009, the Egyptian Green Building Council (GBC-Egypt) was established to
improve and act towards a better environment through adopting the green
building approach. In April 2011, the first version of the Green Pyramid Rating
System (GPRS) was introduced and the second version followed in 2017 building
on the 3rd version of the LEED system. It was developed by the Housing and
Building National Center (HBRC) to adapt to the local context and achieve
Egypt’s vision 2030. The system presents the following levels of certification;
Certified (≥30-<40), Bronze (≥40-<50), Silver (≥50-<65), Gold (≥65-<80) and
Platinum (≥80) (HBRC, 2017).

Some studies discussed the application of the GPRS to assess the sustainable
performance of buildings. It was also applied to an Islamic building in Old Cairo
and obtained 65% of all available points which qualified it to obtain the
certification (W. H. Ali, 2013), nevertheless, another study applied it on a
winning Hassan Fathy prize building, and found that it failed to gain enough
points for the certification (S. Attia and Dabaieh, 2013). Hence, the study along
with Ammar (2012) recommended developing the structure and rating criteria to
correspond with the national context; socially, environmentally and economically.
Also, Ayyad and Gabr (2012) noted that some of the criteria in the GPRS do not
comply with the national Egyptian building code and that the code does not refer
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

to the rating system in any means, nor does the rating system refer to the local
code although they were issued in proximate time. This indicated the important
role played by environmental building laws and legislation and recommended
developing the national code using the International Green Construction Code
(IGCC) and ASHRAE standard 189.1 for High-Performance Green Buildings.
Hence, the study pinpointed the importance of creating a successful integration
between the GPRS and the local building code to grant resilience and support the
local green building initiatives in Egypt.

Sustainable design and construction practices in GPRS are summarized in the

following categories (HBRC, 2017);

1) Sustainable Sites (SS)

This category discusses criteria related to land use and site selection. This should
consider the following criteria:

 Selecting a site that has minimal ecological conservation value and

environmental impact.
 Providing proper public transportation and urban connectivity.
 Preventing rainwater runoff through on-site collection methods.
 Avoiding heat island effect.

2) Energy Efficiency (EE)

This category discusses criteria related to energy demand of buildings, energy
efficiency, and the use of renewable energy sources that reduce the negative
impacts on the environment. The factors considered in this category are:

 Improving the building envelope to reduce the energy demand.

 Application of passive heat gain reduction.
 Encouraging the use of renewable energy sources.
 Selecting energy-efficient mechanical systems.
 Selecting efficient artificial lighting Systems.
 Using energy-efficient vertical transportations.

3) Water Efficiency (WE)

This category discusses criteria related to the efficient use of water in buildings.

 Develop and implement a comprehensive water strategy.

 Reduce potable water uses by promoting the use of reused greywater or
avoiding the use of potable water, where possible.
 Design water-efficient landscaping.
 Minimize potable water use for irrigation purposes.
 Reduce generation of wastewater.
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

4) Materials and Resources (MR)

This category discusses criteria associated with material extraction, processing,
manufacturing and distribution. This aims at minimizing the negative
environmental impact of using materials in a project by adopting the following
aspects:

 Avoiding the use of hazardous or toxic materials.

 Using materials with high renewable content.
 Using local materials to reduce transportation needs.

5) Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)

This category discusses criteria related to indoor environmental quality to provide
occupants’ comfort such as ventilation and air quality, tobacco smoke control,
indoor air delivery monitoring, thermal comfort, lighting quality, and acoustic
performance. The following factors are considered to improve the indoor
environmental quality of a building and hence enhance its sustainable
performance:

 Enhancing ventilation performance.

 Smoking control.
 Thermal comfort.
 Visual comfort.
 Acoustic comfort.

6) Management Protocols (MP)

This category discusses criteria related to building management in order to
mitigate the environmental impacts of a building and to ensure its sustainability:

 Creating a Building Information Model for a building to meet all

sustainability goals.
 Encouraging the calculation of life cycle environmental assessment of
building materials and systems.
 Providing energy and water use sub-metering systems to monitor the
actual consumption of energy and water for each system in a building and
to detect any energy or water leakage.
 Promoting and educating users about the sustainable initiatives through
providing a building user guide.
 Providing facilities for the collection, storage, and proper removal of the
generated solid waste during a building’s operation.

7) Innovation and Added Value (IN)

This category discusses one criterion associated with improving the
environmental conditions of a building. Bonus points are provided for projects
that seek to mitigate adverse environmental impacts by improving the
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

sustainability matter of a building through adopting innovative designs. Hence,

the following aspects are considered:

 Designs which excel in reflecting national and regional cultural heritage

while contributing to the environmental performance of the building.
 Initiatives which demonstrate additional environmental benefit by
exceeding the current benchmarks of GPRS.
 Design initiatives and construction practice which have a significant
measurable environmental benefit and which are not otherwise awarded
points by the GPRS.

2.3.Other locally applied GBRSs

This section reviews other two applied rating systems in the Egyptian
construction market, those are; the LEED system and TARSHEED.

2.3.1. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

The LEED is an international rating system developed in the USA in 1998
(USGBC, 2017). There are four levels of certification; Certified (40-49 points),
Silver (50-59 points), Gold (60-79 points) and Platinum (80+). This is the mostly
adopted rating system in the national market. It has high market value and this
attracts both international and national investment (Ismaeel, 2016), and this is
reflected in the increasing number of LEED registered and certified projects in
Egypt. Nevertheless, it is noted that other Arab countries have precedence in
adopting the LEED system as shown in Fig. (1-a). Studying the Egyptian market,
it is found that the number of LEED-certified projects has reached 8 projects; 4
Gold and 4 Silver certified, while the number of LEED-registered projects has
reached 16 projects. The majority of these projects are LEED BD+C version 3.0
as shown in Fig. (1-b). Attempted LEED credits may change case by case
according to the project situation as shown in Fig. (1-c) (Ismaeel and Rashed,
2015).
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

Fig. (1): Investigating the LEED system in the national market (Ismaeel and Rashed, 2015)

It is worth noting that the majority of LEED projects are commercial with no
track record of residential projects in spite of the fact that the latter represents the
majority of energy consumption on the local level. Also, up to the current time,
the majority of investors prefer to use the LEED system despite its incapability to
address many of the challenges faced in the national market or to address the
peculiar local architectural and urban context (Ismaeel, 2016; S. Attia and
Dabaieh, 2013). Yet, this may differ with the escalated level of difficulty of the
new version which may push practitioners to look for other GBRSs alternatives
especially after the LEED system has paved the way for this culture and
vocabulary for green design and construction processes and practices.
Accordingly, the local practitioners shall determine the most complying rating
system to use among the other following two. This sets the responsibility on the
other two national rating systems to respond to the national and international
green market and to establish links with the national building industry sector
(Ismaeel and Rashed, 2015).

2.3.2. TARSHEED
This is another recently developed national rating system by Egypt Green
Building Council to adopt the efficient use of resources approach for achieving
sustainable development, and it is based on the Excellence in Design for Greater
efficiencies (EDGE) system (EGC, 2015). This enables it to correspond with the
local climatic conditions and different building types and operative systems. Its
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

approach focuses on three key sustainable categories to assess the sustainable

building performance, and this differs from the LEED and other rating systems in
this regards. It discusses the efficient use of energy and water resources as well as
habitat. This approach aims at overcoming many challenges facing the green
building industry and the desire to direct the national market towards the first step
of reducing consumption through three levels of efficiency; 20%, 30% and 40%
which also represents the certification levels; TARSHEED 20, TARSHEED 30
and TARSHEED 40 (Ismaeel and Rashed, 2015).

2.3.3. Comparing the three rating systems in terms of performance indicators

The comparison presented in Fig. (2) shows the similarity of the LEED and GPRS
and the difference in TARSHEED system in terms of approach and criteria of
assessment (Ismaeel and Rashed, 2015).

Fig. (2): comparing the three rating systems; LEED, GPRS and TARSHEED (Ismaeel and
Rashed, 2015)

3. Method
This study adopts a qualitative and quantitative approach to investigate this pilot
attempt of disseminating the GPRS sustainable guidelines and assessment criteria
among practitioners in Egypt.

3.1.The competition description:

The GWHC was announced in August 2017 through a public seminar at the
HBRC on 21 November 2017 and was made available online through the
following link http://www.bue.edu.eg/index.php/competitions/green-worship-
house-competition. Several workshops were held in institutions and universities to
promote the competition and invite the people to participate. The call was open
for a wide variety of participants; individuals and groups, professionals,
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

academics and students of various educational backgrounds. Twenty-five groups

participated in the competition, 17 groups were finally able to meet the
submission deadline with a total number of 250 participants as indicated in Table
(1) and Fig. (3).

Table 1: Participants Statistics at the GPRS competition

Occupation Number
Teaching Assistant 4
Lecturer 16
Architects 24
Students 84
Other 2
Total 130

Fig. (3): Breaking down participants’ backgrounds

The philosophy of the competition is that the building symbolic and a basic need
of life which allows the largest number of community members using it daily and
continuously. The reason for choosing this type of building is to appreciate its
central role in societies and cultures throughout history and their role extended to
include the educational aspects, social, economic and other activities that ensure
the sustainability of the urban society, where the establishments of a building of
worship does not mean creating a new identity but embodying a culture and
translating local and ecological vocabulary. Based on that, the green worship
house is considered a symbolic building for the sustainability of societies and
cultures in different communities and sites in Egypt.

Participants are required to investigate the assessment criteria to be apple to apply

it in their designs of worship buildings. The scale of the presented work can range
from small to larger scale because the assessment criteria are not based on the
architectural design but depend on the level of understanding of sustainable
criteria. The diversity in space and volume is granted for all participants
depending case by case and following the guidelines of the GPRS for sustainable
site selection. This can be a mosque, church, or temple; it may range from a
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

mosque or an Islamic center, church or cathedral. This diversity is suitable for

various design proposals and familiarizes the public with the concept of green
buildings. This shall eventually promote the culture of sustainability and green
buildings and allows different levels of alternatives to design. Accordingly, the
proposed project should take into account all the standards of the GPRS during its
life cycle process including design, construction, control, and management. In
addition to innovation and creativity which are main standards for evaluating
participated projects.

3.2.The requirements
The requirements are divided into the following components;

1) 40% of the marks are dependent on the green building report expressing design
team’s self-evaluation and checklist compliance with the criteria of the GPRS.
2) 30% of the marks are dependent on the design project; plans, elevations and
sections.
3) 20% of the marks are dependent on the process documentation; explaining the
concept behind the design approach
4) 10% of the marks are dependent on the presentation in a form of 7 minutes of
video or powerpoint show describing all the above.

3.3.The assessment criteria

The assessment method is not based on the architectural design but depends on
the level of understanding and achievement of sustainable criteria.
The green building report is the main document of the competition and is carried
out by the contestant to evaluate its proposal according to the seven green
building assessment criteria identified in the GPRS. Accordingly, the level of the
project is determined; platinum, gold, silver, bronze or certified, and for every
level of evaluation award only the best of the level will receive the prize.
The design projects are then evaluated in terms of architecture, identity and
beauty, the architectural drawings and general location that illustrate the
idea according to the report must be demonstrated.
Process documentation indicates the main reasons for applying for the
competition and applying the GPRS as well as the challenges undertaken by
participants to apply its principles in the Egyptian context. This traces the
building process from early conceptual phases till design submittals; site
selection, deciding on building type and scale, developing teamwork skills and
coordination as well as applying advanced management techniques to guarantee
optimum time and cost control.
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

The presentation is assessed using a voting system which corresponds to the

contest's vision for achieving the goal of promoting the culture of sustainability
and achieving Egypt’s 2030 vision.

The Jury is composed of a team of the HBRC; Prof.Dr/ Khalid ElZahaby, Prof.Dr/
Omaima Salah El-din, Prof.Dr/ Ahmed Medhat and Prof.Dr/ Tarek Attia, in
addition to the FECSFS team; Prof.Dr/ Ahmed Rashed and Dr/ Walaa Salah.
External respected experts have been invited to take part in the assessment
process, they are arranged alphabetically as follows; Prof.Dr/ Abbas El Zafarany,
Prof.Dr/ Ahmed Abdin, Prof.Dr/ Ahmed Shalaby, Dr/ Ashraf Dowidar, Prof.Dr/
Ayman Ashour, Prof.Dr/ Moemen Afify, Prof.Dr/ Morad Abdelkader and Dr/
Saad Makram. Hence, the assessment team guarantees developing robust results
that truly participate towards pushing the green building construction move for
the next decade.

3.4.The process
The process starts with the data gathering including the qualitative and
quantitative criteria according to the requirements of the five GPRS categories;

 Category 1: Sustainable Sites (SS)

 Category 2: Energy Efficiency (EE)
 Category 3: Water Efficiency (WE)
 Category 4: Materials and Resources (MR)
 Category 5: Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)
 Category 6: Management Protocols (MP)
 Category 7: Innovation and added value (IN)

The next step includes the collection and manipulation of data to produce
meaningful information about the sustainable categories and credits attempted.
The unit of measurement and the baseline case is determined for each credit. Data
can be analyzed using Microsoft Excel and validated using the SPSS software
package to provide robust results to the developers of the rating system. This
determines the adoption rate of credits which indicates those which are more
difficult to obtain than others owing to complexity or financial reasons. A similar
study was conducted by (Lavy & Fernández‐Solis, 2009) studying the LEED
system using self-administered questionnaires and interviews and validating the
results using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The
study concluded that low initial cost and low level of complexity encourage team
members to adopt credits rather than others. A sensitivity analysis is required to
account for the different accompanying factors that should be determined case by
case, such as regional, local and climatic conditions.
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

A final step includes a process of comparing alternatives against the predefined

benchmarks to determine the certification level of each project according to the
presented documents, calculations and simulations.
The outcome results of the competition provide significant indications in terms of
the following criteria;
 Exploring the suitability of the GPRS tool to evaluate sustainable building
performance in Egypt.
 Evaluating the adaptability of the tool by comparing the criteria and
benchmark to the Egyptian market and building construction practice.
 Determining the suitability and adaptability of the tool to the worship house
project through practical projects application and getting expert reviews.

4. Results
This study looked into the possibilities and potentials of the GPRS through the
study of the GWHC to present a set of outcome results and recommendations for
development. The results of this initiative can be both physical and non-physical.
The former can be spotted in more dissemination of the sustainable knowledge
among practitioners and decision makers through workshops and seminars. This
also leads to more interaction and creating direct open channels between
researchers and practitioners. The later can be spotted in the direct outcome of the
competition; these can be categorized into three main outcomes as shown in Fig.
(4); data bank of all attempted credits, products in the form of the first archive of
nationally certified projects under the GPRS and process documentation which
summarizes the potentials and challenges faced by each design group through
their attempt of a green-certified project. It is noted that the report held the
maximum score weight in the assessment criteria (40%) to stress the importance
of the green assessment process. This develops the first national platform of data
bank with these three main components for further study and analysis:

Fig. (4): The GWHC outcome

It is noted that credits which require measuring and calculating energy

consumption and water use have lower adoption rate. Calculating Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) of green materials had a lower adoption rate as well. Also,
construction credits were hypothetically assessed according to the plans set by
each participating group. This includes waste management of recycled, reused and
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

landfilled waste with a clear description of the type of waste; solid, liquid or
gaseous, in addition to its contamination level.
Also, practitioners pinpointed the following challenges during their attempt
for a sustainable design process using the GPRS;

 Their governing point scoring mechanism structure

 The balance between the quantitative and qualitative assessment criteria.
 The assessment and benchmarking method.
 Considering the tangible and intangible benefits & values of buildings of
such religious and spiritual aspect.
 Considerations regarding how the rating system addressed regionally
specific and local issues.
 Insufficient knowledge and expertise to perform the required energy
simulations and lack of green certified materials.
 More time is needed to follow the GPRS principles and conduct the
required measurement criteria.
 Variations in understanding the GPRS criteria among practitioners and
students.

5. Conclusion
Sustainable design and construction process must follow a comprehensive
approach and this is considered an enormously complex process. GBRSs such as
the GPRS are considered as tools to reach a sustainable building process. This is
in addition to providing guidelines, assessment and benchmarking methods to
support a long-term decision-making process, yet it cannot be considered
comprehensive. This necessitates additional effort from all team members to
develop the required knowledge and awareness, overcome challenges related to
its application and create standard criteria for assessing building performance in
the national market.

The assessment process aims at increasing the quality. It includes processes

of the audit, analysis, goal setting, measuring and benchmarking, and finally aims
at reaching results, evaluation and processes of quality and quantity assurance. It
can take place in advance of the project initiation to predict impacts and proceed
with the necessary decisions, or after construction to document the impacts and
compare it against the design intent.

This competition is a self-evaluation assessment criteria using the GPRS

checklist and scoring criteria. This creates two-way feedback loops between
practitioners representing the industry and the HBRC which represents the
research and development. This is maximised by following an early integrated
process; involving all interested parties, while clearly defining sustainable goals,
required information, and needed expertise. This requires consideration for the
whole built fabric as well as individual buildings.
 To be or Not to be: The National Green Pyramid rating system

The results pinpoint the drawbacks in applying the LEED system in the national
market. Further aims of the research and future studies: This shall have a
significant impact on the urban product. Recommendations follow Ismaeel and
Rashed (2015) to provide insights of developing the national building code to set
the base for promoting green building knowledge and awareness. The GPRS
should also integrate with the potentials and limitations of the local market in
terms of economic housing projects, local building materials in addition to open
channels and feedback loops with the industry. This can be through workshops,
questionnaires and interviews with practitioners and decision makers in addition
to the better development of the user interface to streamline the process of
documentation and simulation. Further steps may include developing a public
database of all manufacturers and suppliers of green products and promote green
materials certifications; this is, in addition, developing local benchmarking
criteria according to the local context.

A development plan should be defined for the GPRS, this may benefit from the
following (Ismaeel and Rashed, 2015);

 Conducting regular questionnaires and interviews with practitioners and

decision makers.
 Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method as suggested by
Ali & Al Nsairat (2009) to develop GBRS for developing countries.
 Using the Simos’ procedure as suggested by Marzouk et al. (2014) to
develop a GBRS for green bridges.
 Developing the user interface to streamline the process of design and
simulation to develop the program to consider the environmentally
friendly design (Neama 2012; Attia et al. 2011).

Acknowledgement
This research would have never been possible without the respected contribution
of the HBRC with all team members who worked on developing the GPRS.
Particular gratitude should go to Prof. Khaled ElZahabi and Prof. Omaima Salah
for creating this typological transformation for the green building industry in the
national context.

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