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 Green Star Technical Clarification Rulings

Technical Clarifications for Green Star represent our answers to Technical Questions submitted by projects, and provide further guidance and reference to others. The list is regularly updated.  

There are two types of Technical Clarifications listed in the table below:

General Clarifications

These are extensions to the guidance provided in the Submission Guidelines. They clarify and sometimes supersede the original Credit Criteria or 
Compliance Requirements. General Clarifications set precedent for future project teams to follow. Should a project team wish to apply a general clarification to its project, there is no requirement for further Technical Questions to be submitted. NZGBC Assessors will also use them as precedents to assess submissions.

Project Specific Clarifications

These are published as references for other projects but, unlike General Clarifications, they do not set precedent. They often relate to special 
situations where multiple prerequisites exist for a particular project and are less likely to reoccur to another project. Therefore, rulings set for Project Specific Clarifications are often conditional and will likely vary for other projects. Each project still needs to submit its own Technical Questions and provides evidence relating to its own building in order to have a similar ruling approved for that specific building. 

Should you wish to apply any Technical Clarification for legacy rating tools to your projects, please submit a Technical Question to the NZGBC to 
explain why and how it applies. You can access the online Technical Question form here

Technical Question Title Tool Version Date Released Credit Name Sub-credit Name TC Link
Best Practice Green Star Submissions DABv1 December 2020 0 - General General Link
Approved Ruling:

The Green Star Team has seen an increasing number of poor submissions resulting in increased assessor time and longer turn-around times for projects.

Credits will only be reviewed by Assessors where the project team submits the following as per the Submission requirements checklist:

  • Evidence referenced accurately - Highlighted and marked up documents with direct answers demonstrating compliance with the credit criteria.
  • Consistency – The submission makes sense as a whole, i.e. occupancy numbers and area of the building are consistent across the whole submission. 
  • Explain clearly in the Submission Template how the project is meeting the intent of the credit – use discussion boxes at Round 1 and Round 2.
  • Specific – Evidence should be project-specific, or where generic they should contain a reference to how the project will address the Submission Guidelines.
  • Reports and specification – After the cover page and contents page, only include the relevant pages of reports and specifications. I.E., do not include the entire XYZ document; only include the relevant pages for the credit.

If Assessors find the above inconsistencies during review, the credit will not be reviewed and will result in Not Awarded points. At the Post Round One (or Two) Comments, the project will not be able to instruct the Assessor where the information was provided if the above protocol was not followed.

 

Here are some extra guidelines for better Green Star documentation:

  • Even though credit templates may allow hyperlinks to be included, we encourage you to NOT use any hyperlinks in the submission as they sometimes break after the submission is shared between GSAPs, NZGBC, and Assessors, and they may also incur issues on cybersecurity if they are linked to a cloud server. 
  • We encourage you to provide all the evidence in PDFs (except calculators), and each credit should stand on its own with the associated documents. Previous assessments have shown the disadvantage of cross-referencing documents in submissions.

 

We encourage GSAP’s to follow the best practice Green Star Submissions document, and watch the “How to prepare a good Green Star submission” video, both of which are available on our website. You can also find an exemplar on how to reference supporting documentation in our Submission Guidelines.